Icarus
by rrrpv
Summary: Percy Jackson is a labeled Pretty Thing, one of the most sought-after supermodels in the world. But at this moment, when the dark curtains leading to the runway swish and then fall silent, all Annabeth can think is that Percy Jackson is the ugliest human being she has ever seen. :: percy/annabeth. model!au.
1. ugly

_(uploaded — 8.31.14)_ :: _[so__ i had a sudden urge for some percabeth. and if you continue to read onward even though you don't like percabeth, i can't help that you're a moron. inspired by "Pretty Things" by _SaturnXK_.]_

:.

_I don't own _Percy Jackson and the Olympians_. __You can also find this on AO3 (link on my profile)._

* * *

**Icarus**

.

.

_i wonder why_  
_i don't know what you see_  
_of course i care_  
_i won't pretend_

* * *

**chapter one** :: ugly

-—

The first thing Annabeth notices about Perseus Jackson is that he is a walking human stick figure._  
_

The lanky model is all flat planes and sharp angles, sheer cheekbones and broken-glass eyes. Every time Annabeth even looks at him, a little bit more of her heart sinks into a virtual black hole that has opened up inside her chest. Because she sees hollow cheeks that are so terribly_sunken,_ it's as if someone has taken a soup spoon to his flesh before carving out a chunk, leaving behind a gaping chasm of skin and bone where flesh should have been. The bones of his shoulder blades jut out underneath pale skin like great slags of stone bursting from beneath the earth; his fingers are essentially skin stretched across a brittle skeletal frame. Annabeth feels she could probably snap those fingers in half if she so much pressed down on them.

She remembers the first time he slid into the chair, it had been in Beijing, and the theme of that night's walk was nature.

They are running on a tight schedule, make-up artists and models all, and backstage is teetering on the precipice of a razor-sharp edge. Annabeth isn't even a full make-up artist yet, but rather a PA to a one Thalia Grace, which means she's stuck buffing up more low-key names — not that she's complaining. The job is stressful enough as it is.

Annabeth quickly dashes a layer of foundation over Will Solace's face, brush nearly slipping from fingers slippery with dry powder while she tries to ignore the commotion coming from behind her where Drew Tanaka is slapping her manager across the face because _"you're fucking supposed to use the pink eye shadow! PINK, you dumbass!",_ and an especially disheveled Nico di Angelo is stuck screaming at Katie Gardner (who's screaming back) while trying to apply a light rouge to Katie's cheeks.

"Y'know, sometimes, I fucking _hate_ this job," Thalia snarls under her breath at one point from where she is working feverishly on Luke Castellan at her station to Annabeth's immediate right. "Fucking hell." She shoots a piercing glare to Annabeth, who's catching a much-needed breather, "Keep in mind, the promotion's usually way more trouble than it's worth, kid," she sagely says before snapping her attention back to Luke.

Annabeth finishes as quickly as she humanly can with Will after her boss's outburst, trailing earthy skin tones and splashing some clear gloss over his lips and all but shoves him out of the seat as soon as she deems him ready.

_Make these ones pretty,_ Thalia had instructed her before the whole madness had started. That was her one order before the black-haired girl was swept up in the riptide of incoming models.

Waiting to be beautified. By Thalia, by Annabeth, by all the overworked make-up artists present in the room. This is her job, this is what she has signed up for: to daub foundation and blush onto the freakishly thin people she works for and sees on a daily basis. Skate over their flaws and leave behind a façade, a plastic doll.

_Then repeat._

So when Percy Jackson, who is _definitely_ not a low-key model, appears and settles down onto the chair at her station with a thump, unceremoniously snapping his fingers in the air and demanding that Annabeth attend to his sunken cheeks, dark bags, sallow skin, she only shakes her head apprehensively before diving in to work.

As far as Annabeth can tell, Percy, like nearly everyone else she's seen in his profession, lives by walking on the runway and throwing whatever food he eats up in the toilet. His breath smells like blood and vomit and _does-it-look-like-I-give-a-fuck_ when Annabeth leans over to brush makeup over his prominent, chiseled features, and she has to resist the urge to gag at the stench.

When she is done, Percy critically scrutinizes himself in the mirror.

"Do I look feminine enough?" he asks Annabeth quite civilly, quite bored.

She nods dutifully. Beside her, Thalia and Luke have engaged in some sort of loud shouting match over the color of bronzer she used, which only contributes to the overall din still caterwauling throughout the whole area.

"...There's one thing," Percy mutters to himself, still staring at the mirror. Annabeth tears her eyes away from her fuming boss and is starting to have second thoughts about whether or not Percy Jackson is an incurable narcissist when he pulls out a pristine white case and pops in a pair of brown contact lenses.

_"Fucking hypocrites, all of them..."_ he hisses under his breath. He stands up, nodding once at the mirror, and sweeps out of her space toward his hairdressers without a backward glance.

Annabeth watches him leave.

And Perseus Jackson, _Percy Jackson,_ he is a labeled Pretty Thing, one of the most sought-after supermodels in the world, but at this moment, when the dark curtains leading to the runway swish and then fall silent, all Annabeth can think is that Percy Jackson is the ugliest human being she has ever seen.

* * *

_sooo basically a collection of not-quite-lengthy_ things_ detailing a (somewhat dysfunctional?) relationship between percy and annabeth in an overly dramatized model!au setting. will be updated sporadically, b/c this is more of a writing exercise than anything, haha._

_all the best._


	2. flowers

_(uploaded — 9.18.14)_ :: _[meh__]_

:.

_I don't own _Percy Jackson and the Olympians_. You can also find this on AO3._

* * *

**Icarus**

.

.

_time is a valuable thing_  
_watch it fly by as the pendulum swings_  
_watch it count down to the end of the day_  
_the clock ticks life away_

* * *

**chapter two** :: flowers

-—

It's another six months before they happen to have a second chance encounter with each other.

They're both in Paris, doing a walk for Louis Vuitton, and Annabeth is her own person now. Thalia had, not unkindly, told her that she has more than the sufficient skills needed to head out into the field as a professional make-up artist, then told the blonde not to get her head bitten off, and then promptly kicked her out from her personal-assistant-ship-whatever-you-call-it into the full and ghastly world of modelling, alone and reeling and terrified. She now has a new bronze tag (that has already been chipped by a well-aimed blow from Drew Tanaka's inch-long nails) with her name — Annabeth Chase, ANNABETH CHASE — printed across the metal in nice, bold and black and big sans serif font; underneath it, in slightly smaller caps, are words that proclaim her as MAKE-UP ARTIST.

The name tag swings haphazardly from where it has been pinned loosely onto her breast pocket, reflecting the harried mood of its bearer precisely even as she finishes glossing over a model's lips, whose name she cannot quite recall at the moment. After a while, all of them begin to blend into one great heaving sea of nameless, angular faces, skeletal arms and fingers and dark eyes alight with the cold frost of contempt, because none of them quite have the strength to slip fire into their stony stares.

Annabeth has just finished curling the ends of Katie Gardner's brown hair when his voice cuts through the staccato bursts of conversation and screaming that wisp through the air, deep and flat and emotionless.

"You know, I don't have all day."

Katie's snarl appears even before Annabeth can decide whether or not she wants to turn to stare at Percy Jackson in the face, although this is not saying much because Annabeth would have been content to wait for eternity before she makes her decision. The model currently sitting in Annabeth's prep station whirls around, no doubt armed with an entire nuclear arsenal of caustic insults and hoarse screams, and bathes Annabeth with breath that stinks of stomach juices and the iron tang of blood.

_(What the hell,_ Annabeth thinks irritably, leaning slightly away, _eat a breath mint or something.)_

But then Katie catches sight of exactly who she is about to snap at, and instead turns away without a word, pressing her white, thin lips tightly together. She sinks down into the plush chair as if trying to melt into the ground and disappear. Annabeth resists the strong urge to roll her eyes and winds dark brown hair around the curler one last time before shooing the girl away, a stiff angle set to her back.

Percy Jackson slips into the chair in front of her without another word, the sheer fabric of his dark gray clothes rustling silently as he settles down in his seat. He then folds his hands across his lap and waits, eying Annabeth in the mirror.

For some reason unbeknownst to neither man nor gods, Annabeth proceeds to flush as red as an overripe strawberry as soon as she catches Percy Jackson's green eyes staring at her, unblinking and flat.

"What?" she asks with a hint of apprehension, even as she begins to daub foundation onto Percy's cheeks. Cheeks that barely have any visible flesh clinging onto them, cheeks with pasty skin stretched taut over naked bone, cheeks that Death himself must have possessed.

His eyes snap up to the ceiling, an irritated sigh huffing past his lips. _"'Respect your seniors,'_ they said," he snarks, skeletal fingers interlocking ever the more tightly together across his lap. _"'Your seniors may be idiots too dense to form a complete sentence,'_ they neglected to say."

Annabeth really doesn't really know what to say in response to this. So she daubs some more foundation onto the bridge of Percy's nose and hopes he won't go ballistic onto her and begin screaming about how this part of his skin looked a quarter of a shade darker than that one and did Annabeth even _know_ what she was doing and why the hell did she become a make-up artist in the first place?

(She doesn't know the answer to the last question herself.)

Percy continues to grumble, oblivious to the fact that Annabeth is desperately trying to tune him out and not streak concealer too heavily in places where it's not needed. "This is fucking _ridiculous._ Fucking managers are probably half-assed dimwits who can't tell the difference between black and white. It's the fucking middle of December and the theme is goddamned _flowers."_

"If you don't want a streak of white slashed in a most unsightly manner across your face when you go out to walk," mutters Annabeth, and she drops her brush onto her stand before grabbing a bottle of white eye shadow, "please stay still."

Percy snorts. "Have you ever _seen_ Luke Castellan and his fucking scar?"

Annabeth presses her lips tightly together and bluntly says, "Please close your eyes."

Percy complies, and when she's finished, she reaches for the blush.

"You're good at this," he observes, and Annabeth almost drops her pouf.

"What?" she splutters.

"How long have you been here?" asks Percy, completely unconcerned by her flustered manner.

"I...one month. As a full employee. Um, I was Thalia's PA. She taught me a little when I started so I could help out."

He hums. "Thalia's got an eye for talent, then."

Percy Jackson, as Annabeth just finds out, is currently the only person in existence who has managed to make her speechless on two separate occasions.

"...Thank you, Mr. Jackson," she eventually says, right when she's applying the last daubs of make-up onto his face.

His hands swing by his sides when he rises to his feet, giving Annabeth a curt nod of thanks before striding away to the hairdressers.

When Annabeth inadvertently takes a look at his fingers, they are as brittle and thin as Popsicle sticks.

* * *

_don't worry, the percy we all know and love will come through soon enough. ...okay, maybe not so soon. _#_# _i have no idea how long this will be, but i know what will happen if that helps any?! _o.O

_all the best._


	3. apple

(uploaded — 10.23.14) — _[seriously, dont follow percy's attitude. food is good. food is love. food is life. im 10000% sure all of you look amazing the way you are _:)_]_

:.

_I don't own_ Percy Jackson and the Olympians. _You can also find this on AO3._

* * *

**Icarus**

.

.

_somebody better let me know my name_  
_before i give myself away_  
_somebody better show me how i feel_  
_'cause i know i'm not at the wheel_

* * *

**chapter three** :: apple

-—

He doesn't eat.

The very word _eat_ leaves a bad taste in his mouth.

Eat means a full stomach, _full stomach_ means he'll be full, _full_ means he won't be _empty,_ and he needs to be empty. Blank, clean, untainted, so that he can become someone he's not, so that the bronzer and concealer and mascara brushed over his features are the only things that the world sees and not the bag of skeleton bones underneath.

Percy Jackson gives his best death glare at the slice of poundcake that has been shoved under his nose by — _what's her name again?_

He decides after a moment of careful deliberation that he doesn't really give two fucks about cheating and sneaks a look at her tag.

_Annabeth Chase, Make-up Artist._

"What are you _doing?"_ he snaps, all but flinging the plate away from him. It lands with an inaudible sound against the mirror in front of him, trailing a wet smear of white frosting and bleeding blueberries down the reflective surface.

(He _hates_ frosting.)

Chase quirks an unimpressed eyebrow at the pile of moist sugar and flour slopped messily across the mirror's formerly pristine surface, now resembling a vague pile of mush rather than the neat triangle it had been five seconds prior.

"You haven't eaten," she bluntly says, before shoving a single hand underneath his chin and tilting his head up to apply thin lines of black liner on his eyelids.

Muttering through clenched teeth: "And I don't want to, thank you very fucking much."

She laughs, and the sound is bitter and mocking.

"Do you even hear yourself? You've eaten one apple since this morning, Jackson."

He doesn't even ask how she knows this; instead he roughly tears her hand away from underneath his chin, almost ruining his makeup in the process. Chase lets out a sound of irritation.

"And that apple is actually _quite_ enough." The cold bite of winter snaps at the heels of his words, frosty and unsympathetic.

"And does your throat hurt because of the acid burns, _your majesty?_" she snarks back. Leaning closer, "I know what you're doing when you disappear into the washroom every two hours."

Percy waves her off. "If you are done with prodding into my personal life, I'll take my leave of you now."

And he strides away from his seat without another word on limbs made of plastic.

Maybe it's just his imagination, but the lights outside on the runway are flashing a darker shade of gray, and he thinks he can feel Chase's gray eyes burning into his back. Ripping past layers of the little flesh that clings onto his bones, bones made of sand and soul patched together with childish stitches, woven in fallacies.

_Because the people I spend time around these days aren't people, they're Barbies and Bratz and Polly Pockets and their limbs hurt just as much as their plastic counterparts'._

He immediately sweeps into the restroom and locks the door after the show, and pretends he doesn't see Annabeth Chase's accusing eyes glaring holes into his back.

* * *

_all the best_


	4. sweep

_(uploaded — 11.23.14)_ :: _[you can count on at least one update a month, that's all i can promise. chapters rly aren't getting any longer out from here...__]_

:.

_I don't own _Percy Jackson and the Olympians_. You can also find this on AO3._

* * *

**Icarus**

.

.

_see, i know what we got to do_  
_you let go and i'll let go too_  
_'cause no one's hurt me more than you_  
_and no one ever will_

* * *

**chapter four** :: sweep

-—

Annabeth has watched Percy Jackson walk down the runway all of one time before deciding she'll never do it again.

She hovers backstage, pale fingers crunching black velvet, silently watching each model come to and fro, to and fro. Percy walks the second to last walk and breezes past her without a sound, without a glance tot he side: strutting confidently down the runway like he had been born to do so, eyes set firmly ahead, cold and unyielding, thin shoulders relaxed yet tensed with a lion's grace. Slender man bordering upon skinny bordering upon anorexic whose bones and skin are dipped in a sheer fabric façade and then draped with drizzles of molten brown and white chocolate threads, hair gelled to the side in dreadful waves of stormy black.

And he looks handsome, _beautiful,_ perhaps, to the screaming horde of photographers with cameras that flash at an average rate of too many times per second, reporters with their screeching voices and aggressive use of microphones, the magazine editors working the Photoshop like there's no tomorrow, the rich patrons and labels and the entire _world_ in general._  
_

He looks handsome and beautiful because many, Annabeth among them, have molded him into something to look upon with admiration. He looks beautiful because of linen and fleece and wool, the shine of his hair, the faint shimmer around his (dead) eyes and under his (sunken) cheekbones and the pale cerise slash of his mouth.

Percy Jackson is nothing more than a reflection of others, mirroring back the efforts of a hundred and ten artists who have toiled over him, a blank canvas turned into something appealing on the eyes. Something lifeless and dull and uninteresting as two-dimensional painted pools of water, whimsical frozen pieces coalesced together into something shaking and rickety at its core during the best of times, only held together by lies and fallacies.

Annabeth turns away with a sick feeling in her stomach and can only stare at the concave gap of the hollow space beneath Percy's ribs, where the fabric flutters much more loosely around than it does other areas, when he passes by her once more.

:.

The next time there's a walk, it's in Barcelona and the theme is androgyny. Annabeth stays behind backstage this time and refuses to watch Percy walk to help manage the scraps of silk and feathered cloths and sequined bolts lying about, tossed away at the last minute. Thalia chucks at her a bottle of make-up remover before grabbing her coat and fumbling over her words to explain that something happened at home with her baby brother and she has to leave _right now_ and then promptly abandons Annabeth, leaving her in charge of the returning models.

Annabeth _hates_ the removing part.

She doesn't hate it because the models throw tantrums about if she is using the right brand of remover (_it's just alcohol and moisturizer, for fuck's sake_), or if it is suited for their skin (_sorry, lass, but when you break out, it'll still be my job to cover up_), or if they dislike the smell.

She doesn't mind (_not all that much_) when Drew Tanaka plucked the sodden wad of cotton and wool out of her hand and tosses it at her face, or when Will screams bloody murder because the solution stings his face. She wipes off the white fluff with one sweep of her hand, and the ringing in her ears is only temporary.

No, she hates it because with each sweep of her fingers, she takes off some pigment and cream, and off with them comes some of the artificiality that surround and encroach with greedy fingers the men and women she works on, leaving only the stark white truth behind. The cotton pads clutched in between her fingers gather streaks of creamy brown and red gloss and yellow glitter, and the face and neck and shoulders will lose a cover or two, exposing humanity in a cruel combination of stinging and sticky residue.

_Sweep_, and there is a laugh line. _Sweep_, and there is a tiny black mole. _Sweep_, and there are the scars from an early breakout of acne.

_Sweep, _and there is work undone; careful work that had ensured these people looked anything, _anything_, but human.

These men and women are blank canvases and empty dressmaker's dollies, pretty things for designers to play with, for choreographers to walk down runways; they are the real-life Barbie dolls and Kens, plastic with movable limbs, pretty things with ribbons in their hair and red on their lips, wrapped in satin and fleece.

But with each flaw they become pretty things with heartbeats and hopes and imaginations, and Annabeth Chase does not think she can handle understanding the mysteries of humanity and beauty, especially when her chief source of income is hiding it.

* * *

_all the best._


	5. celebrate

_(uploaded — 12.24.14)_ — _[ahhhhh another day of korrasami being canon. it's glorious. *coughs* happy christmas eve! anyway, drunk percy is...well, drunk. _:/_]_

:.

_I don't own_ Percy Jackson and the Olympians. _You can also find this on AO3._

* * *

**Icarus**

.

.

_when your dreams all fail_  
_and the ones we hail_  
_are the worst of all_  
_and the blood's run stale_

* * *

**chapter five** :: celebrate

-—

One week later, Percy barrels out of a group of waif-like women to grab at her shoulder, pushing her out of Nico's way. The dark-eyed make-up artist almost hits his head on the corner of a table and flashes Percy a scathing glare (not that the model notices or anything) before scurrying out of the way.

"You!" Percy all but snarls, his green eyes wild and animalistic. Annabeth quirks an eyebrow at the disheveled heap in front of her. "I was looking for you!"

He is wearing a confection of cloth-of-gold and spirals of hard silver plastic, slashed here and there with red silk. He looks like an elf out of one of Annabeth's childhood books, if an elf had no flesh and a poorly concealed beginnings of a zit.

Annabeth lets him sink down onto the chair as courteously as is possible for a woman who had spent most of the previous night awake. As she organized her palettes, he flips out a cigarette.

The blonde immediately bristles. "This is a No Smoki —"

"Relax, Grandma, I'm not lighting it," he breezes. He flips the cancer stick in his fingers, watching it weave in and out of bones and skin and clear, hard polish.

Annabeth begins working in silence, letting silver melt into purple melt into red melt into black. Under her fingers, Percy goes from an elf to an evil king out of a fairy tale, with pale lips and high cheekbones sharp enough to cut glass (_would that they cut through the stone as well_).

Under her fingers, Percy also sways slightly, breathing out alcohol and acid, rendering the evil king nothing more than a tipsy aristocrat.

"Christmas party?" she asks conversationally, glazing his cheeks with gold.

Percy snorts in derision, and some of the powder flies out of the angle brush. Annabeth grits her teeth and simply applies more.

"Yeah, right. Christmas party for the Bitch Queen, yay."

Annabeth fights back a troubled frown, ignoring the fact that Percy had just referred to himself as a queen. "Yeah...I had a lonely Christmas too."

She'd had dinner with Nico (Thalia was still having family problems), but Percy doesn't need to know that.

"Lonely?" His voice is a whiplash, sharp and unforgiving as it slices through the air like it's the blade of a scythe. "I wasn't _lonely_. I was surrounded, absolutely _surrounded_ by lovely people who were merry through the night..."

His eyes close as his voice trails off, and Annabeth doesn't know if he is falling asleep or passing out. Nevertheless, she unwillingly catches Percy's head as it drops (_but carefully, and only at the temples, all that work can't be smudged and turned into a train wreck_) before she gently eases it backwards. His eyes open into two cloudy green slits and he gazes at her groggily.

"We've met." His mouth stretches into the shade of a flirtatious smirk, darkness falling all too easily into the dimples his wolfish grin creates.

Annabeth resists the urge to roll her eyes before she slips his eyelids shut with her fingertips. "Yes, we have met before indeed." _You're just so wasted that you can't even remember that I was the person who tried to force-feed you a slice of blueberry cake, which you then rudely threw against my mirror._

Percy only smiles even wider, half-tired, half-drunk. "Percy Jackson. You can call me Percy."

"I know, sir."

"Tch, tch." He sits up, wincing. Even through the layers of cosmetics, Annabeth can see a vein bulging on his temple. "I said _Percy_, not _Sir_."

Annabeth shakes her head and continues to work on Percy's eyelashes. "Well, _Percy_, you have a show in fifteen minutes and I haven't even done your mascara yet."

"Pfft. Mascara." Percy's cigarette slips out past the thin cage that his skeletal fingers have created. Aside from the pursing of her lips, Annabeth ignores it. "Mascara and talc and eyeliner and shadow and lip gloss. They're like...icing. I hate icing. Did I ever tell you I hate icing? I like chocolate, though."

"Yes, you've told me," Annabeth says dryly, grabbing the pouf from the table in front of her.

_He's really, really drunk. Or high. _Annabeth doesn't even want to know which.

"...Percy, do you think you can walk today?" she asked cautiously.

"Yeah, yeah." He carelessly waves a gloved hand at her, white silk rustling through the air. "Bah, I'm just hungover."

"No, you're still drunk," Annabeth flatly points out. "What have you eaten since morning?"

She watches him as he gnaws on the inside of his cheek. His green eyes turn cloudy for the barest moment, flickering with frustration and worry. "I...I don't remember."

"Percy, I'm serious. What did you eat for breakfast?"

His eyes glaze over on cue. "I...think it was an apple."

"_An_ apple?" Annabeth spew out, vexed.

_Again?_

"Yep." His gaze once again turns unfeeling, blurred by drink and memory.

And Annabeth wants to argue so badly about the benefits of a healthy breakfast. She wants to point out that it is only her skills that made him look even faintly alive just then, that sans make-up he looks like a fresh corpse, and smells of tobacco and vodka and vinegar. She wants to yell at him to get her shit together, to realize that he isn't even a skeleton anymore, just a walking stretch of skin stretched over a few misshapen bones.

Instead, she shakes her head, straightens a slumping Percy in his seat, and continues slathering sticky black fluid onto his eyelashes.

* * *

_alright, relatively shitty chapter but still, it sets up for the next one._

_all the best._


	6. doll

_(uploaded — 1.24.15)_ — _[we're about halfway through this story. i think. i could be lying _:/ _tbh im just letting this story write itself until the ending along w/ a few key points but whatever__]_

:.

_I don't own_ Percy Jackson and the Olympians. _You can also find this on AO3._

* * *

**Icarus**

.

.

_once upon a time_  
_a few mistakes ago_  
_i was in your sights_  
_you got me alone_

* * *

**chapter six** :: doll

-—

Annabeth doesn't keep track of time. How can she, when she's constantly on and off airplanes, and the stage lights are the only source of brightness she knows, and date lines and time zones change as quickly as the seconds tick away?

It's autumn in London, and Annabeth finds herself in front of Percy for the first time in God knows how long, and Percy is staring at her with a self-satisfied grin on his face, exactly the same as before.

At least he's sober this time around.

"Haven't seen you since Paris," Percy breathes, and this time he only smells like cigarette smoke instead of booze. "What other figurines have you been prettifying, and how many?"

"Too many to count," Annabeth says, and conversation falls between them easily, as if they'd just seen each other yesterday. "But you're definitely not the first one I've been prettifying in a while."

Snorting, Percy pops a mint into his mouth, sucking thoughtfully as he watches Annabeth brush a dark line up his cheek through hooded eyes.

"Do you want to know what I did?" Percy asks, though Annabeth knows he's going to tell her anyway, regardless if she wants to hear it or not. He's pretentious like that.

"What?"

She humors him, because she has a feeling no one usually, _really_ listens to him when he speaks.

Percy goes silent, toothpick fingers fiddling with his navy buttons.

"Nothing, really," he says finally, and Annabeth has to physically refrain from rolling her eyes at the anticlimactic turn of events. "Can't remember. The details get a little lost between the sex and the alcohol."

"The model life, huh," Annabeth mutters, picking up a large powder brush.

"I guess," Percy responds, a little moodily. He cocks his head, tilting it back a little to allow Annabeth to apply a pale foundation. "You have a boyfriend, Annabeth?"

Startled by the random inquiry, Annabeth glances sharply at him. He stares benignly black, with sea green eyes that are surprisingly calm and made of clear glass, and then she caves and takes a few seconds to answer.

"Um, no," she says hesitantly. "Between me jumping on and off planes every week or so, I haven't exactly had any time to settle into a committed relationship." A little lost (but since when did Percy Jackson gain the power to render her like a hesitant schoolgirl?) and a little more than irritated by the fact, she's desperate to take the attention off herself. So she says, "Do you have a girlfriend?"

"Heh. If you call Zoë a girlfriend," Percy says idly. "She's more the personification of the devil, if you ask me."

"Then...why are you dating her?"

"I don't know." Annabeth does roll her eyes this time, because it seems to be his favorite phrase. "She's a good fuck...?"

His statement tapers off at the ends, so it turns into more of a question than anything.

Annabeth only shakes her head and continues to apply the blush on his hallow cheeks. And, well, she supposes it makes _sense._ Two models would surely interest each other, find solace in an understanding with their line of work that is so hard to picture with someone not in the fashion industry. But more than that, when Annabeth looks at Percy and Zoë, she can't seem to see anything but silicon bodies and high-end clothes that are snipped and trimmed in ways that should be symbolic declarations, but are so obscure that they just end up being vaguely ridiculous shirts that only look good on the thin and glorious.

Pretty people belong together, after all.

After the London show ends, there's an after party that Percy drags Annabeth along to even though she's quite sure she's not supposed to be here.

"I'm just a makeup artist," Annabeth complains, feeling out of place in her black jeans and white button-down. "This is for the models and the — the designers and stuff."

"You should just..." Percy slurs, already drunk from the pre-drinks, "lighten up, Annabeth. No one cares if you're a model or a fucking garbage collector. Just act like you belong here, and _voilà_ — you belong here."

"Hmm." Annabeth frowns and looks uncertainly around her. "In a sea of people who make a living pretending to be dolls, I see."

Percy laughs drunkenly, and if it were a compliment or an insult, he takes in all in stride.

"Great," he slurs again, struggling to straighten up but failing and only wilting over into Annabeth's unwilling arms like a flower starved of water. "That's all I ever wanna be."

"Well, isn't that depressing," Annabeth sneers before she can filter her words.

Percy pauses, and if Annabeth hadn't known any better, she'd have said that his eyes have turned clearer and sharper in that moment, a sliver of infinity. And looks at her for a long time, and his cloudy gaze travels down to her name tag, which is still pinned haphazardly across her breast pocket, the letters scrawled messily on the sticker.

"Yeah, well," Percy says finally, as he draws in air again, "nobody ever said that I had to be happy to do my job, right, Annabeth?"

She shrugs, and Percy only burrows the two of them deeper into the bowels of the party.

And the deeper they go, the more Annabeth that she _really_ doesn't belong here. She sees Drew flutter up, long legs ruler straight, confident in her kilometer-length heels, a predatory smile that curves the crimson of her lips, and Annabeth feels uncomfortable in her own skin.

Everyone is predatory, Annabeth thinks, as she looks around. Everyone is just a cynical mess of betrayals and blank slates fit for makeup to define their personalities for the night, because to survive in an industry like this, back stabbings and lies are as common as the outrageous clothes that are found hanging from the racks backstage of a Prada show.

When Annabeth watches Percy and Jack exchange pleasantries, she realizes that Zoë isn't the only one. Perhaps Reyna as well, with her sharp eyes and false yet bright cupcake smiles, a sly voice winding into his ear.

"All your fucks?" Annabeth says conversationally, when Reyna floats away.

"Not Silena," Percy answers just as casually. "Too fucking dedicated to that guy of hers. Can't remember his name. He's sort of airheaded and dumb looking."

"You mean...Charles Beckendorf?" Annabeth says skeptically. "He's one of the top supermodels around. How do you not know him?"

"Because _I'm_ the top supermodel," Percy says arrogantly. "That fuckwit doesn't even know how to differentiate between charmeuse and crêpe de Chin."

She purses her lips and points out, "You don't either."

"Yeah, but at least people know that I don't try," Percy says dismissively. He peers at her, as if controlling his vision is the most difficult thing in the world. "Modelling is just an image, Annabeth. We're selling beauty that's about as deep as a fucking piece of paper."

Annabeth sips her champagne and says nothing.

"And whoever said that you don't need brains to be a model is a liar," Percy continues, and he's starting to droop as he stands. "Of course you need brains. Fuck, you need to figure out who to cozy up to and who to step on. You need to find out which one of these human coat hangers is your enemy, and who will help you rise to become the best. Modelling is about blood and flesh, Annabeth, underneath all that shimmer and blush you like to use."

Lurching forwards, Percy half stumbles, half pushes himself to the balcony that overlooks the glitzy sea of lights that is two a.m. London. He kneels next to a potted plant and his chest heaves, and a second later he's vomiting up a sour mixture of gin and stomach acid. Annabeth doesn't make a move to help him, just turns away and steels her nerves and leans against the railing, lets the breeze kiss her hair.

Percy is still retching ten minutes later, and Annabeth has a feeling that he's not puking just because of the alcohol anymore.

"Vomit up everything," Percy had once said to her with a wry grin. "And when I say everything, I mean _everything."_

Percy has thrown up his day's worth of food, which can count as nothing because it's only been liquor and one mint and two celery sticks. And then comes the blood, and then comes the humanity.

"You're nothing when you're on the runway. You're just a skinny clay figure that's come to life, and you're breathing in hairspray and foundation, and breathing out Vogue and Armani laced with cigarette smoke and sleeping pills," Annabeth recalls Thalia saying, when the two of them had been watching a walk during Annabeth's very first day as the punk's assistant.

"You okay?" Annabeth quietly asks, when Percy is wiping his mouth and gurgling down a glass of brandy he'd snagged off a passing waiter.

"Yeah," Percy says, checking his reflection in the glass windows. There's nothing to check. Percy doesn't change because there's nothing to change. Percy is a doll, and dolls are always perfect, even after they've been throwing up their intestines and the linings of their stomach. "I usually do that in the bathrooms though, but hey, the pot plant was here and the bathroom was too far away. Sorry about that; I didn't mean to show you such an uncouth sight."

Percy laughs at the irony, eyes twinkling. But Annabeth doesn't know anymore, doesn't know whether that twinkle is from happiness or from the glitter eye shadow she'd used on him earlier. But because this is Percy, it's probably neither. That twinkle is probably just a catch of the light that's bounced off the plastic of his retinas.

Annabeth leaves an hour later, when Percy is all over Zoë in the corner of the room, and she feels loneliness eating up her insides painfully, in a way she imagines food does to Percy.

* * *

_aaaaand of course it turns out that on a double update and two days before my history midterm i churn out the two longest chapter of this fic (the next one has like cuddly percabeth *le gasp* it'll be up shortly) i've really got my priorities straight lol_

_all the best._


	7. rendezvous

_(uploaded — 1.24.15)_ — _[double update and this is_ **chapter seven **_(i made a mistake w/ the last chapter so if the email didn't resend when i uploaded it, go back and read that damn chapter otherwise nothing will make sense); if you haven't read the last chapter, go back.]_

:.

_I don't own_ Percy Jackson and the Olympians. _You can also find this on AO3._

* * *

**Icarus**

.

.

_don't let me drown, don't breathe alone_  
_no kicks, no pangs, no broken bones_  
_never let me sink, always feel at home_  
_no sticks, no shanks, and no stones_

* * *

**chapter seven** :: rendezvous

-—

By the time three o'clock a.m. rolls around, Percy is drunk out of his mind and Annabeth decides that it's time for him to call it quits for him, because there's obviously no way in hell that Percy is conceding to leave the party. She has to drag him almost kicking and screaming out of the area and push him into the backseat of a waiting limousine that she'd called in the meantime before getting in herself.

Percy passes out in the car, toppling backwards in his seat in an angle that worries Annabeth. His legs are long white sticks of plastic in the gloom, his midriff almost no thicker than his wrist. His back is arched backwards over the headrest, threatening to snap in half.

Annabeth pulls his head to rest against the side of her thigh, wan skin and inky black locks blending in with the dark color of her trousers. She'd had the driver drive to her hotel, and she watches London rushes by them, snow and lights and vehicle smoke mingling with the mint and lavender from his hair and the plumes of glitter from her shirt.

When they arrive, Percy is still very much an inert vegetable; thus, she ends up half-dragging Percy up to her room, garnering her a few odd looks along the way. She laughs to herself, both parts bitter and self-deprecating. Annabeth Chase, make-up artist, is dragging Percy Jackson, sought after supermodel, into her one room hotel suite (bed, TV dresser desk, bathroom with a tub).

She ends up dropping him without ceremony on her bed. He barely weighs anything, and she tries not to let this fact get to her head; Matthew, one of her little brothers, had been heavier the day she'd left for college, and he had been only twelve.

There's a frown tugging at the corners of her lips when Percy begins to stir slightly, opening his eyes. They're dull and green, reflecting the ambient glow of the city's night lights that filters in through the window in the background.

"This isn't...a party," he mumbles, rubbing roughly at his eyes.

"No, it isn't," Annabeth neutrally responds, prying off her shoes. "It's my hotel room. You passed out, and I didn't know where else to go."

Percy only attempts a smirk, a lazy pull of the corners of his lips. "Trying to get lucky, eh?"

Annabeth only sighs, humor and disbelief picking at the edges of the noise. "Can't really get lucky with a sack of bones."

Percy nudges her side with the toe of his dress shoes, an indignant snort escaping through his nose. "Well, take these off then, will you?"

She only stares at him mutely, her expression a flat mask made of glass and steel. "You're joking, right? Tell me you're joking."

Very much not jokingly, Percy assumes what Annabeth thinks may be a pout on his end (or maybe just a very convoluted grimace of pain) and then says, "Do it for a sack of bones?"

She ends up pulling off the leather horrors after throwing him a pointed glare. Despite trying not to even notice them in the first place, Annabeth can count the bones of Percy's feet through his skin, jutting out past pale skin. The veins are a stark blue-green color, snaking up his limbs like the branches of a tree as slender as he is.

"Well, Annabeth, it's Christmas," he says unexpectedly, eying her carefully. Annabeth gives a start at this remark and wonders, slightly bewildered, how in the _world_ she could have forgotten that it's December twenty-fifth, and Christmas Eve the day before that. She chalks it up to being so wrapped in her work that she hadn't noticed the days flying by like water in a sieve, dropping out of her sight as quickly as they had come.

"And here we are, two lonely souls —" Percy continues, oblivious to her discomfort.

"Two doesn't make lonely," Annabeth frowns.

"Yeah, sweetheart? Two makes lonely if one is me."

She brushes off the "sweetheart" comment and then shakes her head. "That doesn't make any sense, Percy."

"Forgive me, oh Lady Chase." He drags himself backwards up the mattress, rumpling the clean white sheets, then claws his way up the headboard until he is more sitting than lying. "This one is still a little drunk."

"I know that," Annabeth drily says. "So tell me, exactly how much did you drink, from six in the evening until now?"

He shrugs. "Enough."

They sit in silence for a while, with Annabeth looking at her hands because she doesn't know where else to like, while Percy twiddles his toes.

"I'm hungry," he announces suddenly, and Annabeth's head jerks upward, because _Percy Jackson is hungry?!_

_"You?"_ she asks.

"Well, I'm always hungry," he replies. "That, or not hungry at all. There's no in-between." He glances around the room. "That reminds me, you got a smoke?"

"I don't smoke." Her voice is clipped.

Percy hums and then pries his feet back into his shoes. "Ah, I'll go and see if the bakery's open."

Remembering the last time she had tried to give Percy any kind of sweet (or that debacle with the slice of cake), she asks, "You want cake _now?"_

"Hey." He smirks, getting to his feet. "It's Christmas."

:.

Half an hour later, Annabeth finds Percy conked out and asleep, sprawled across the queen-sized bed on his stomach, snoring lightly. The thought of his ribs collapsing under gravity alarms her for a fraction of a second.

All he ever does was drink, smoke and sleep, Annabeth realizes; those are his means to achieving ultimate beauty, to be a fairy, an elf, a waif — vulnerable and weak and skeletal, perfectly smooth and perfectly thin enough to be molded into the fancies of the rich and the artsy. He needs the sleep most, but he does it the least.

Their lives are private jets and runways, the gloom of the cabin by day and the sparkle of the shows and laser lights of the parties by night. Once, Annabeth had gone thirty-six hours without glimpsing the night sky; another time, she had not known morning for two days. Back and forth, back and forth, around the globe and back; from the lands of always summer to bleak winter to spring over the course of one shot week, and no one even so much as bats an eye.

"Annabeth?" She starts at her croaked name and turns around, just in time to see Percy open an eye almost painfully.

"Hey," she says. "Did you get your cake?"

"I did, and I got yours, too."

He pulls out the box with a simple chocolate sponge cake contained within, adorned with nothing but glazed cherries, because — and Annabeth remembers with a start — Percy hates icing. He scrambles up, his hair standing up on its end, a raven black halo behind one half of his head. Annabeth takes it with a nod of thanks, and the plastic knife that's lying in the crumpled bakery bag, and he blinks and says, "I...I don't think so..."

Annabeth's slicing the cake in half before he knows it. "You've probably only eaten one apple since morning."

He shrugs, and rips off the lid of the box and hands her half of the cake in its remnants and sticky crumbs. He looks at her, the box, the plastic spoon, and sighs.

"I guess I'll try," he mutters, cutting off the tiniest bit of sugar and pastry. Annabeth watches him swallow, and catches him wincing slightly, then cut another slice. Only then does Annabeth proceed to wolf down her portion.

"So, Annabeth," he starts conversationally. "Do you have a girlfriend?"

She frowns at him over the top of a cherry. "I already told you this."

"I was drunk," he reminds her.

She shakes her head. "I've slept with exactly three guys, and none in the last two years."

"Ouch. And why is that? They not good enough for your queenly standards?"

Annabeth actually wants to slap him. _"No."_

She is halfway through her portion of cake, eating quickly, when he speaks again, suddenly.

"Fucks," he says harshly, and Annabeth almost falls from his chair at his acerbic tone. "That's all I am to the other models, and that's all they are to me."

Her lack of a reaction toward the actual content of his statement, rather than his tone, is what surprises her. If anyone had said such a thing to her when she was fresh-faced and twenty-one, she probably would've been scandalized.

"What about family?"

Some sadness creeps into his eyes. _Finally,_ some emotion.

"My mom. Sally," he mutters. "I never knew my dad; apparently, he up and left my mom when she was pregnant with me. We were always hard-pressed for money. My mom was always out, I had to raise Tyson. That's my little brother. Well, half-brother, but...he's still like full-blooded family to me."

Tyson. A nice name, and short, with none of the feigned regality that Percy brings to the table. The face that Annabeth conjures in her mind was young and fresh, with a wide smile laced with childish innocence, dark black hair mussed and scruffy.

"Where are they now?" she asks cautiously. "What does your mom do?"

His lips curl ever so little. "No, she's a part-time babysitter. And my brother's in college studying mechanical engineering."

Annabeth almost laughs before the cruelty of it registers. Percy had begun modeling aged eighteen, which meant that he never went to college, and evidence pointed towards it being so in order to support his family this mostly faceless entity of mist called Tyson-and-Sally. Only a quarter of her half of cake remains.

"Now tell me about your family," he says.

She shrugs. "There's nothing to say, really. I've got a single dad. He's an engineer, runs his own firm now. A bit scatterbrained, never had that much time for me. I have two little brothers, Matthew and Bobby. They're twins. Both are going to college now." An unremarkable verbal history, the tale of thousands of children worldwide.

Percy nods. "That's really normal. For you, anyway."

She doesn't quite know what he is implying. "I'm sorry?"

"If you're so normal, why are you here?" He gestures around the room; Annabeth knows that he means London, with its headlights and billboards and smoke and snow. "You should be teaching art somewhere, or painting walls, or designing furniture, or whatever it is that art graduates do."

"Double major, in architecture, too."

Percy shakes his head. His arm drops like it hurts him to hold it up. "Architecture too? So why are you here? Why are you putting sugared cherries on our cakes, trying to make us more delectable than we are?"

Annabeth bites her lip.

_Because I wanted to see beauty, and when I did, I wanted to create some more._

"Why are _you?"_ she counters instead. "You earn more in a week than I do in a year, you can leave any time; why are you still here, when you hate this life you lead?"

He looks away, her features setting themselves into ice and stone. "It's all I've ever done, Annabeth. It's all I know."

"So, no secret hobbies, hidden talents, whatever?" _Does nothing make you completely human, just a lost boy stripped of a real life in the crowd?_ _Have you never held a paintbrush, or picked up a pen?_

He doesn't deign to grace her with a response. Instead, he excuses himself silently, padding to the bathroom, a stick of white clad in the shadows of night. Annabeth leans back in her chair and closes her eyes, wishing she can just shut her ears against the retching sounds echoing throughout the room.

Percy stays the night, taking the chair, curling up in it like a cat, all bony limbs and mussed dark hair. When dawn comes, he makes a call from the room's phone, and before the sun is all the way up, he is gone.

* * *

_ok this took longer than expected but oh well. i hope it was a good percabeth heart-to-heart chapter anyway. it was fun to write._

_all the best._


	8. proposition

_(uploaded — 3.21.15)_ — _[going to pull myself together and try to finish this within the next month...next chapter coming in a little while.__]_

:.

_I don't own_ Percy Jackson and the Olympians. _You can also find this on AO3._

* * *

**Icarus**

.

.

_things we lost to the flames_  
_things we'll never see again_  
_all that we've amassed_  
_sits before us, shattered into ash_

* * *

**chapter eight** :: proposition

-—

The next week at a walk in Venice, Annabeth almost misses him when he trudges in, pasty skin and bruised circles under his eyes all.

Percy's eyes linger on her own briefly, but he doesn't say hello.

:.

Annabeth is in Mumbai come July, and the backstage is two levels beyond sweltering. Annabeth's never liked the heat too much, but Sahara-esque temperatures combined with the humidity of the Amazonian rain forest? Briefly, she wonders if she's died and is now paying penance for some sin she doesn't even know she's committed in her own personal hell.

Her blonde hair was slathered across her forehead, held in place by a sheen of sweat. She is working on Piper, struggling with the liquid foundation, which rolls down her cheeks instead of remaining spotted. Annabeth's had to brush plain talcum powder across her face to prevent a complete meltdown.

It is when Piper's opening her mouth into what Annabeth prays will not be a scream when Thalia, with her ever impeccable timing, materializes at her elbow.

"Annabeth, I need to talk to you."

Piper's mouth flaps shut and presses into a thin line, an irritated sigh eking out through her nose.

Annabeth mumbles around a mouthful of pins. "In a minute, Thalia."

_"Now."_ Her former mentor's tone brokers no nonsense.

"Then talk to me now," she mutters angrily. "I'm right here, alright?" The heat, the humidity, and the excessive sparkle in the models' clothes are all getting to her.

Thalia grunts. "Fine. Percy Jackson wants you."

She looks up, cranes her neck, and searches the crowd.

"I didn't know he was here tonight," she says. "He'll have to wait, Piper here is the showstopper." She picks up one of the mascara tubes and continues to work on the model under her hands.

"No, no," Thalia says. "He wants _you._ He wants to hire you as his personal artist."

Piper's eyebrows shoot upward, widening her eyes. _Yes, stay that way,_ Annabeth wants to tell her.

"I'm employed with you, Thalia."

"And _that, _Annabeth, is precisely what I told him." Thalia runs her fingers through her hair, ruffling it into even more of a spiky mess. "He's quite persistent."

"Then quote me," Annabeth snaps, because she _really_ doesn't want to deal with any drama concerning Percy Jackson when Piper's walk is in ten minutes and she hasn't even finished applying the eye shadow. "I don't want to be employed by him. There."

Thalia's lips quirk. One of Piper's eyebrows descends. _You sure you want to do that, bub?_

"Close your eyes, please," Annabeth says in response, her tone the coldest thing in the room.

_Sapphire. Silver. Gold. Night. Burgundy, cerise, shimmer._

Around her, jewelry clinks and jingles, saris crackle as they are wrapped, PAs whimper, and a hair dryer groans. Thalia taps her foot impatiently next to her, and Annabeth wills herself to ignore the black-haired woman.

"You're done, ma'am," she says eventually.

Piper glances at her newly distorted self in the mirror, and then says, "Can I call you an idiot, Chase?"

"I believe you did so eleven times the first time I worked with you, ma'am," she replies, trying to sound sarcastic. She only sounds tired to the bone.

Piper adjusts the cloth draped over her shoulder. "Here's the twelfth, then. You are an _idiot,_ Annabeth Chase. Jackson wants to hire you, you don't just say 'no' and be done with it. Jackson _hates_ the word 'no.'"

"Thank you for the advice, ma'am. There are people waiting behind you."

Annabeth thinks she can almost see Thalia's aggravated disbelief rolling off of her in waves. Piper, meanwhile, shoots her a look too tired to be exasperated, and instead clutches at the voluminous skirt that threatens to overwhelm her lower body. The studio lights catch the hundreds of little mirrors sewn into its hem, flashing at Annabeth's eyes and quickening her irritation.

"She's right, you know," Thalia says as the model sashays away. "Jackson hates being denied anything."

Annabeth grunts in response, rearranging her impeccably placed makeup palette. "I didn't say I'll never work _on_ him again, Thalia. I just don't want to work _for_ him."

"Is this about Christmas?"

Annabeth flinches.

Thalia's eyes have turned a shade of dark blue, borderline purple, and she knows they have the tiniest sparkle in them right now. _You nearly got lucky with Percy motherfucking Jackson, and you brought him cake? You, Annabeth Chase, are an idiot._

It is so warm that even thinking about her words makes her want to scream.

So Annabeth ignores her. Thalia finally stalks away with her hands flung up in the air in pure exasperation. Silena is in the seat now, curtained in sparkles and silver and pink, hair straightened out into black ribbons, looking for all the world like an abomination. Annabeth sighs softly to herself, preparing to emblazon her in gold and bronze, gazing ruefully at the girl's lovely cheekbones before softening them into the rest of her face.

_Whenever did these figurines start turning human in a swirl of silken skirts?_ she wonders.

:.

In Florence that August, he is the first to slide into her seat.

"I hear you don't want to work for me."

The bags under his eyes are smaller, and she notices a very light tan that she could have sworn weren't there before.

"I hear you don't want to work with me," he says again, cold as his hands.

"I like working with Thalia," Annabeth replies. Percy is neat in a richly colored suit, the lapels hanging loose, dress pants simply strips of tulle.

"And I like working for Gucci." He rolls his eyes, and she nearly slips the eyeliner across his temples. "Face it, Annabeth, you're miserable."

She lets go of a hollow laugh. "I'm not miserable because of Thalia." Annabeth sweeps the sorrel pencil into a small wing. "I'm miserable because I spend days and nights prettifying terrible people." _Odd, that's why I started in the first place._

"Then quit."

"Easy for you to say. You don't even keep down chocolate cake."

His jaw shifts. "Those two things aren't related."

"Of course not," says Annabeth. It comes out a bite harsher than she intends it.

Percy sighs. "Annabeth..."

Annabeth's hand slaps down onto her table, snatching up a pouf. She cuts into his sentence abruptly, and her voice is cold as ice.

"Close your eyes, please."

Percy hesitates, and acquiesces.

:.

He follows her to her hotel room that night, and he isn't the least bit drunk.

"You can't persuade me to work for you this way," she snaps, throwing her jacket onto the bed. "My answer's still no."

Percy shrugs, falling backwards onto Annabeth's bed, like those months ago in London. "Maybe I just want a place to sleep, Annabeth, ever thought of that?"

All they really do is sleep, in the end, tired out by their argument. He curls up into a fetal position at one edge of the bed, threatening to fall off, and Annabeth spreads herself over the other, one arm dangling down. She woke up to her head nestled on Percy's stomach, his fingers running through her hair. He's picking up each strand and then letting it fall before he sweeps his hand through, watching the rows fall into place. Annabeth can see her gray eyes reflected in his. His fingertips are cold; perhaps his veins really do channel cold water.

"Your hair's not dyed," he whispers, twisting a bunch. It hurts, but just a little. "Why is it so...blonde?"

Annabeth raises an eyebrow. "Did you just ask me why I'm _blonde?"_

"Yes," he says, unashamed.

She glares at him and mutters, "Go and ask my parents' genes or something, if you're so curious."

He abruptly changes the subject. "It was snowing in London."

_You had more vodka than water in your system, and we both smelled of cosmetics and smoke and gasoline._ "I remember. Your window was all frosted over in the morning."

He frowns, his skin crinkling like vellum. "Ah. I don't actually remember that show at all."

Annabeth contemplates responding, but in the end, she just closes her eyes.

_You were fifth from the last walk, piss drunk and bone tired. You looked like an evil king, the kind that always turns out to be a sorcerer with a heart of gold._

* * *

_we're like a little over 50% done with the story come next chapter i think? guh but i promise you everything will be okay in the end_ :)

_all the best._


	9. normality

_(uploaded — 3.22.15)_ — _[mostly filler (? lmao all these chapters are like filler) and more percy-centric__]_

:.

_I don't own_ Percy Jackson and the Olympians. _You can also find this on AO3._

* * *

**Icarus**

.

.

_one by one, stings my eyes_  
_each is gone, each a disguise_  
_smiling, so aware_  
_precious moments so rare_

* * *

**chapter nine** :: normality

-—

From Florence he lands in Budapest, and she ends up somewhere in Brazil.

And then both of them somehow knock into one another in Paris. Percy's in a sheer suit with silver scales down the front and some kind of rhinestones on the cuffs. Annabeth, as usual, does his make-up, moonlight and plums and oceans and ice tipped with crimson and rose.

He doesn't talk. He only shifts the suit about, fingering the lapels, tracing the scales. He seems a little in awe of his outfit.

"It brings out the color of your eyes," she offers. It's an olive branch of sorts, a tentative foray into this new..._whatever _they have. (Because people don't just normally follow you to your hotel room unless they're some creepy stalker — which Annabeth truly hopes Percy is not — right?)

Annabeth's deepening his eyebrows when his fist clenches around a particularly large rhinestone. His facial muscles seem to solidify.

"Do your job, Chase," he grits out.

Annabeth raises an eyebrow, but doesn't speak any further. Percy's mostly been the one to instigate conversation and make contact with her before; what's changed, _now?_ She wants to stop and ask him what was wrong. Only that makes her feel like they are friends, and she really doesn't know if she wants to be "friends" with this man. _(Fucked up,_ she thinks bitterly as she grabs foundation from her station. _That's what our relationship is. Fucked up.)_

...Oh, god. Annabeth can't even imagine what it'd be like to be friends with _Percy,_ with his dead eyes and deader hair that feel like the threads of an unraveled satin ribbon, whose voice sounds like an alcoholic's one December but a chain smoker's in July, and like autumn leaves in the early morning. But she holds her tongue, working carefully, trying to make Percy's face glow.

Which is a rather difficult task to undertake, considering that Percy is glowering, a twig-like little storm cloud hailing a blizzard. He is moving her jaw, and Annabeth can hear the uncomfortable dissonance of enamel grinding against enamel.

"Please stop that," she half-snaps, abandoning all pretense of niceties. She holds a black-coated brush an inch from Percy's eyelashes. "I am trying to do my job."

His eyes narrow immediately at this, mouth stretched into a snarl that is almost petulant. He looks like he is on the verge of slapping her (which, sadly, wouldn't be the first time that's happened to her).

_Go on,_ Annabeth silently goads,_ hit me. Hit me if that doesn't snap your fingers in half._

For five seconds, there is silence between the two of them, punctuated only by his rapid, shallow breaths and the clack of a straightening iron behind them. Percy's jaw stops shifting as he turns his eyes away from hers. His distant green eyes gleam, if only for a second.

"Please, Chase," he mutters after a few moments that are fraught with tension. His shoulders slump. "Just...finish up, I have to have my hair done."

"...Don't want to talk about it?" she finally asks, concern creeping into the coldness she previously attempted. "Open your eyes wide and look at the ceiling, please."

"I would, but I won't," he replies, his voice gaining some strength. "It's...stupid."

Annabeth rolls her eyes in exasperation. "Fine. Then don't tell me about your stupid problem."

Silver seemed to melt into his skin, the alabaster foundation only sucking it in. She'd have to use the silver-blue, then. But silver-blue would only highlight the death in his irises, and people can't have that. Paris's fashion aristocracy wants to see a living doll draped in flowing water, not some icy snow zombie crawling from the pits of the North Pole.

"My dog died," Percy suddenly blurts.

Annabeth nearly drops the palette in her hand. "I'm sorry, _what?"_

"My...my dog died." Tears are welling up, making his eyes twinkle and threatening to ruin Annabeth's hard work. "Bla-Blackjack, he swallowed something — he died this morning, and I don't — don't know _how_ to —"

He blinks, trying to hold the droplets in (thank god for waterproof mascara), shaking his head slightly. The motion loosens some of his hair from all the spray and gel, so shimmering black sticks to his forehead, embedding in some still-wet concealer.

Annabeth takes a step back, trying to get further away from the hiccuping mess of a boy before her as she desperately dabs at his eyes with a blue-stained cotton pad.

Percy isn't Percy the supermodel just then, he's just..._Percy._ He is a boy in his twenties in a borderline ridiculous costume, breaking down over the news of a deceased pet. He isn't cold, pliable plastic anymore, he is pale skin and bones and blood and tears and shaking with sobs that he must have hoarded inside himself with the meticulousness of a dragon protecting its cache of gold. He is a person, a man, a bag of bones with actual _feelings_ like love and grief, a working brain, a live _Homo sapiens sapiens,_ a human being.

Something that feels like the bottom end of an angle brush pokes a dumbfounded Annabeth in the back.

"Do something," Thalia hisses.

Annabeth takes a step forward, then another. She is holding herself back from any form of human contact with Percy, which is...actually kind of ridiculous. Florence had only been a month and a half back. Sometimes, she'd wake up in another city with the ghost of his fingertips on her scalp.

Percy looks up at her, his face paint completely ruined, some purple smeared over the bridge of his nose and up to his forehead. Annabeth has to smile.

"I'd hug you, Percy, but I'm wearing a new shirt."

His lip quivers, and Annabeth is half-afraid it will drip to the floor like spilled jelly. He nods, mouths a hurried _"Excuse me,"_ and leaves for the washroom, the rhinestones on his cuffs hitting the chairs and legs with little clinks.

"I think you should follow him," Thalia offers helpfully.

"What, to the mens' room?" Annabeth gestures to one of the younger models sitting in the vacant chair and suppresses a sigh. "He'll be okay."

* * *

_all the best._


	10. colors

_(uploaded — 4.10.15)_ — _[was working on another thing that i haven't updated in 5 months, but it was being difficult, so here you go! an icarus update _:) _anyway, there's one more chapter till we come to the climax of the story. then after that comes the final arc.__]_

:.

_I don't own_ Percy Jackson and the Olympians. _You can also find this on AO3._

* * *

**Icarus**

.

.

_no more hurt here to feel_  
_in the dark we can glow_  
_past the night, there's a field_  
_where the rainbows always shining down_

* * *

**chapter ten** :: colors

-—

Night finds her at the door of her room, and Percy before her, clutching a small overnight bag.

"...Oh my _god."_ Annabeth lets her arms rise for all of two seconds before they flop down limply to her side. She's resigned and oh so fucking tired and wants nothing more than to have a good night's sleep in a hotel without Percy Jackson barging in on her at one in the morning, dammit gods, what did she do to them in an alternate life that had them hating her so?

"'_Why am I here,' _or '_Why can't I just move in with you'_?" Percy smirks in response.

"...Why won't you leave me alone..." She is too tired to let her tone lift at the ends of the question, rendering it an utterly flat statement.

Flat statements are really all that are necessarily required to communicate with Percy, she thinks.

"Come _on_, Annabeth," he whines. "It's only for the night."

"Are you drunk?" she asks him dully, as he passes the threshold in a sweep of flannel cotton.

"Not enough," he replies, dropping the case on the carpet.

:.

Midnight finds him sitting up, leaning against the headboard, with the lamp at his side lit.

"Percy?" Annabeth slurs. Her mind is cloudy, voice groggy, and the inside of her eyelids uncomfortably bright. "Jesus Christ, _what_ are you even doing? It's the middle of the goddamn night."

She opens her eyes enough to note the notebook leaning on his thighs and the double-ended coloring pencil (_violet and black, oh my fucking god, who puts violet and black together?_) in his fingers.

"You're _coloring_?" Annabeth splutters. Her tone is two shades away from being flat-out scandalized. "Percy, I...can't you can color in the morning?! Or in your flight..." Her own yawn betrays her, cutting her off mid-sentence. "...Please turn off the light," she finally mumbles.

Her brain refuses to figure out Percy's expression just then. The words _hurt _and _exasperated _register somewhere. He smiles, very, _very _slowly, and reaches out to stroke her hair.

His manicured fingernails are infuriatingly soothing against her scalp, and she can feel her eyelids beginning to droop.

Annabeth snaps them open and refuses to shut them, letting the air-conditioning dry out her corneas and the cold pierce through. She had to blink several times afterward, but she is almost completely awake as a result.

"Percy?" She props herself up on her elbows, his hand slipping away from her tresses. "What _are _you doing?"

"Coloring," he responds, his tone as clipped as kitchen shears. "Why don't you pull the blanket over your head and go back to sleep."

Annabeth flips on to her stomach and groans. "Can't do that now." She peers at him. "What are you coloring, anyway?"

He sucks in a shallow breath, his neck so thin Annabeth saw his Adam's apple bobbing. The yellow lamplight reflects off his hair, and his face is glowing, but there are also the dark circles under his eyes and shadows in the hollows of his cheeks. He looks half undead and half ethereal, a fallen angel perhaps, or a merciless god.

The model's head droops, and his halo appears as he blocks the lamplight. "Blackjack," he whispers, his voice the sound of two stones being rubbed together. "I'm coloring Blackjack."

Annabeth had nearly forgotten about his dog and mentally kicks herself for it. "Oh. Uh...may I — may I have a look?"

Percy drops the pencil beside him and moves to hand the notebook over, but his hand stops midair, trembling slightly, as if the thin spiral-bound book is too heavy for him to bear. His fingers slip from under it, letting it land with a soft _whumph _on his lap.

"...No," he states flatly. "You may not."

"Okay," Annabeth whispers. There had been that gleam in Percy's eyes again, the one that made them look like painted eggshells. "Then...can you turn the light off now?"

:.

September catches her in Stockholm.

The theme is something inspired by nature, because all the models are decked out in spotted fur and vibrant colors. Annabeth is starting on a very young model with huge cyan eyes whose arms appear to be completely encased in rusty red feathers.

"Enjoying yourself?"

Percy is leaning against a mirror, dressed in a rumpled gray suit and a dark dress pants, his normalcy sticking out like a pock-marked thumb.

Annabeth tries not to stare. "You're not dressed yet."

He looks down at himself. "I'm dressed enough," he shrugs. "I'm not walking today."

"Oh." Annabeth turns back to Ella, who is blinking up at her with confusion and something that takes her a while to decipher.

_It's respect. God knows why, but that look is respect._

Annabeth massages a pale shade of beige into her face. She does it as slowly as she dares, trying to be pointed in her ignorance of Percy Jackson.

Within what felt like twenty seconds, the foundation has blended in well enough to pass off as Ella's own complexion. She takes a step back and wonders about what she is supposed to do next. Nobody had provided any of the make-up artists with any sketches, or hints, or even a meaningful glance.

Percy clears his throat loudly, sounding like it's his life's wish to spit up his spleen. Annabeth only turns her head to frown at him from the corner of her eye. _No. I am _not _going to let you distract me._

"How old are you, kid?" Percy snaps at Ella.

The girl physically shifts backwards, her eyes widening enough to threaten engulfing her small, delicate features. Strands of dark hair have escaped the feathered mantle over her head, kissing her forehead with the softness of a father.

"Ni — nineteen, sir," she whimpers. Her feathers rustle in the small puff of wind, caressing the back of her seat.

Percy stalks forward almost predatorily, the lights catching the greys and yellows of his face. One hand with impeccable fingernails and spidery fingers shoot out to grab Ella's rounded chin.

Annabeth nearly whimpers herself as the nails dig into the layer of tinted cream like a spoon dipping into mashed potatoes. _Jackson, don't you fucking dare ruin that make-up._

Percy tilts the face in his hand up, carefully examining the arch where the flesh chin melts into the neck, revealed through a chink in the dress.

"How long do you plan to stay in this industry, kid?" he asks in a voice that is almost gentle.

"I — I don't know, sir," Ella stutters. "This is only a part-time job. For now."

"I see." Percy's voice is ivory. "It's rather fitting that they made you a...what, a harpy? Can't have them ogling that chicken neck."

Ella's jaw drops, and Annabeth can almost hear her self-esteem snap in two.

"Cover her face in beige," Percy orders, his nails leaving small crescent dents in Ella's buttery facial armor. "Put white on her lids, and hope they notice nothing but the eyes." A napkin materializes in his hands. "Not that they'll notice much else, but let's stay on the safe side."

He stalks off in his smart black shoes, carefully wiping each finger of the wheatish residue, leaving a wake of disdain and peppermint behind him.

:.

"You didn't have to be so hard on her," Annabeth hisses, watching Ella stalk down the runway in all of her feathery red glory, each step generating a resounding set of _click_s.

"I was doing her a favor," Percy murmurs out of the corner of his mouth, raising his hands to clap along with her, smiling as brightly as the waning moon.

* * *

_all the best._


	11. fall

_(uploaded — 8.17.15) :: [still alive and kickin', a mere 2 weeks til the one year anniversary since this fic was published haha. unfortunately in the 4 months that have passed, my nonexistent skill when it comes to writing make-out scenes has not increased by one iota so i'm sorry in advance that ur poor eyes have to see that. howsabout u just skip to the end, where the fun stuff is _:) _(...lol im joking u should rly try &amp; read everything ^^")]_

:.

_I don't own_ Percy Jackson and the Olympians. _You can also find this on AO3._

* * *

**Icarus**

.

.

_one minute i held the key_  
_next the walls were closed on me_  
_and i discovered that my castles stand_  
_upon pillars of salt and pillars of sand_

* * *

**chapter eleven** :: fall

-—

"You know what?"

"What do I know?"

Percy stabs into a baby beet with his fork like it has caused a personal affront to him in a distant past life.

"I'm saying, you know what would've been better than those aluminium robotics?" he asks.

"Enlighten me," says Annabeth drily.

_"Chainmail."_

Annabeth stares at him. She has to close her mouth before the mouthful of overpriced pasta can fall out.

Percy spears a large, mostly unshredded piece of lettuce alongside the beet and eats it off the fork politely.

When Percy'd asked her if she'd wanted to have dinner with him, Annabeth had thought 'dinner' meant a fancy restaurant of some sort. Evidently, it had only meant a 24-hour diner-coffeeshop hybrid. It is small and warm, with a light haze of smoke from where a patron sat with a cigarette pressed between his lips, nursing a large tumbler of amber liquid.

"...I'm sorry, but chainmail?" _Are you drunk already?_ There is a half-full vodka near his elbow, but Annabeth isn't sure if what little alcohol is in his system will make him call her Annie.

But then again, there isn't much of a system to begin with.

Percy only nods pertly in response. A ghost of a wince flutters across his face as he swallows.

He'd made her wipe her face down after the show like the other, working models, letting Annabeth ruin his careful contouring. The diner is only half-lit, and they have taken the booth next to the window displaying the red OPEN sign. In the waxy yellows and grays and scarlets and golds, Percy looks like a crone one moment, a blushing gentleman the next. Where the reds catch the sunken half-moons underneath his eyes, they are a deep purple, reminding Annabeth of Paris and his meltdown and his turning on the runway in his shimmering blue suit, managing to look powerful, but that power is perverted by little things like the widths of his wrists and the manic coolness in his eyes.

"I've always wanted to walk a Middle Ages sort of theme," Percy says, fishing a piece of chicken out of his plate and depositing it in the side plate.

Annabeth shakes her head. "Percy, the Middle Ages were disgusting."

Percy's laugh lines fold back in a near-perfect sneer of contempt. "I'm not suggesting the boys walk after forgoing a bath for a month or two." A baby tomato ruptures under the force of his fork, its gelatinous insides erupting over the pale lettuce.

Annabeth rolls her eyes in response and loads her fork up with some more pasta. "You're going to have to paint plague marks all over them, anyway."

Percy's eyes widen as his eyebrows furrow, the corner of his mouth twisting up. It's a perfect picture of incredulity. Against his translucent skin, his expression is as funny as it is horrifying, like a mask a child had whipped up in a particularly messy art class.

And there were veins and arteries and lymph nodes under there, and ragged, undernourished muscles, and if Annabeth stabbed her right now he would bleed out onto the floor.

"Annabeth!" he screeches. "The plague was before the Middle Ages."

Annabeth laughs. "I have a minor in European History, Percy. The plague was during the Middle Ages."

He frowns deeply, and Annabeth can almost feel the tendrils of doubt surrounding his aura, settling on his shoulders in a dark cloud. He looks lost: a boy in his twenties who had taken the wrong lane while walking down history, finding himself surrounded by tall walls of academia and books he should have read and books he had conveniently ignored.

He breaks eye contact, instead watching his fork twirl a shred of green, the piece of leaf slipping in and out of the prongs.

Annabeth feels something heavy weigh down her stomach. _Guilt._ But that's ridiculous; there is no reason that she should feel guilty about pricking Percy Jackson's bubble. Because Percy Jackson's bubble is ice and iron, and she should be feeling proud.

"Percy?" she ventures. "Are you—?"

"I don't think the fashion industry would notice," he pipes up, and the gleam in his eye is ambitious, manic, excited. His irises are green and blue and violet and it hurts her head to look at them for too long.

Annabeth snorts. "The fashion industry can't tell between futuristic and robot fetish."

Percy laughs at this, a throaty, rumbling roar of thunder that seems to drown out the forks and glasses and plates clattering in the diner, the hush of her own breathing, the voice inside her head.

"I like you, Annabeth Chase," he giggles, wiping away a tear. "Where were you all my life?"

_Backstage, prettifying your peers, prettifying you, because all of you had beauty you scrubbed and starved away._

:.

He drags her to his own hotel room this time.

"Of course he has a suite," Annabeth mutters, mostly to herself. She sits herself gingerly on the edge of the giant bed. "Any reason why you have a king-sized bed?"

"Ask my manager." He is shuffling around the room barefoot, hair a rumpled mess, lank locks framing his face like dead vines. A large trolley-case was lying open on the couch, spilling wisps of cotton and polyester, tumbling down to the floor in a colorful waterfall.

The desk is covered in sheets of paper: newspapers and printed ones, catalogs, leaflets, newsletters, a glossy magazine open to a two-page spread of an advertisement for a watch — and a few sketches of women in red, blue, vibrant orange and violent pink.

Annabeth wants nothing more than to take a closer look.

_No, Chase. You may not._

Percy disappears inside the wardrobe near the doorway, the door swinging shut behind him. Annabeth watches him: a little fascinated, a little skeptical.

"Percy?"

He doesn't reply. The wardrobe lets out a soft creak.

Annabeth launches herself off the bed, reaching the wooden doors in three strides. She knocks twice, sharply, and a bolt of pain reverberates through her knuckles. "Percy? I know you're in there."

Something clatters to the wardrobe floor; another thing — something bulky — hits a wall.

_Okay. What the hell._

"Percy, I'm opening the door."

She wrenches it open, the plywood complaining as loudly as the steel hinges. She finds Percy crouching on his knees, scrambling blindly at a corner. In the brown gloom, his pale skin almost seems to be glowing.

"What the hell requires you to lock yourself in a closet?" she snaps.

He leans back, sitting against the wall. Annabeth's almost sure that he's to have splinters up and down his back. But he remains there, frowning, thinking, chewing the inside of his cheek, before looking at her with eyes already half-filled with suspicion.

"I can't find my mints," he states.

Annabeth tries to stop her eyebrows from escaping into her hairline, choosing instead to pinch the bridge of her nose. "...Do your mints come in a little orange bottle with your name and dosage instructions on the label?"

Percy scowls and tries to shove her left leg. "I'm serious, it's just mints." He gets up, dusting his pants off. "And the bottle's pink, and squat-looking."

"Do you need the mints right now?"

"Oh, I don't know." He smirks, her features sharpening into something close to terrifying, and oddly striking. "Do you mind my mouth not smelling like mint?"

_I hate it when your mouth —_

Annabeth's very thought is cut off by his lips colliding violently with her teeth, his thumbnails digging into her cheeks. He smells like vanilla and melons, and his mouth is alcohol and smoke and tomatoes and beets, with traces of ecstasy and moonlight and watercolor, and now he's nibbling at her lower lip, and it hurts, but gods know Annabeth doesn't want relief from it.

He is tugging at handfuls of her hair, forcing a muffled grunt from her, and his tongue is grazing the insides of her lips now, trying to get her to open her mouth.

_What? ...Jesus Christ. I'm not even kissing you back, Jackson._

And no, she isn't, but she can't pull away, either.

His lips are cold and chapped, his tongue feels sour, and his hair is tickling her nose. Behind her eyelids she sees red sunbursts and blue comets and bright yellow flashes of lightning, blinding her when she opens her eyes.

He's breathing through his nose _(why the fuck are you breathing through your nose),_ the warm air fanning across her face, and there is still a trace of mint.

"Per —" she manages to mutter when he pulls back, and she finds herself swallowing the rest when he begins kissing her up her neck, sending streaks of scarlet warmth down her body. She sighs audibly, trying her best not to lose herself in the feeling of his fingernails whispering across the nape of her neck.

The other hand is raking down her back, tickling and scratching at the same time. It's only when she feels it slip under her shirt that her brain wakes up enough to realize where this was going.

_Oh, fuck no._

"Percy...no," she grits out, panting, because he had somehow sucked all the air out of her lungs.

He stops immediately, his lips nudging her earlobe. "I'm sorry?" he whispers, his incredulity sinking into her bones.

"No." Her hands are on the cruel, jutting angles of his pelvic bone _(when did they get there),_ and she steers him to her front. He offers no resistance, just a small exasperated huff of air.

"Why're you so fucking obstinate, Annabeth Chase?" he spits. For once, his ocean green eyes are on fire where his dilated pupils haven't pushed his irises to the boundary. His lips are damp and a fierce pink, his cheeks are flushed, and he is shaking ever so slightly. The nails on the hand holding the back of her neck dug into the flesh, and this time they are painful in the way painful is supposed to be.

Annabeth closes her eyes; breathes in, then out. "I don't want to do this right now," she tells him slowly, ensuring that he doesn't miss a word. She slips a hand into the one dangling uselessly near her hip, her index finger internally thrumming alongside the pulse racing underneath his thin skin. "Not here. Not like this."

Percy's hand slips down from her shoulder to entwine with her free one. He frowns up at her, half petulant, his eyes losing some of its shine. His flush is receding quite rapidly, and Annabeth notices just how pale the insides of his eyelids looked.

"Why?" he whispers; barely audible, plainly hurt.

_Because I don't want to be so close to you that I can feel your heartbeat on my skin, my lips and my heart. Because I don't want to know how warm you are despite the frost in your blood. Because there's a twisted part of me that wants you to be a paper doll I can paint at will, with little white tabs so your clothes keep changing, but never letting me know if there's flesh underneath, or wires, or bone._

She presses a kiss to his forehead. "We're in Stockholm," she grins, trying to ignore the ice cracking in his heart. "There's a disorder named after this place."

He snorts softly, closing the distance between them to nuzzle the hollow of her neck. "You're an idiot, Annabeth Chase."

She rolls her eyes, but it doesn't hide her grin.

_I'm only an idiot because I'm so afraid you're one too. Maybe we're all idiots. Maybe that's why we're humans and not computers. _She buries her nose in the green and orange scent of his hair. _Maybe that's why, Perseus Jackson, I'm so afraid of your idiocy._

:.

Annabeth wakes first, finding Percy clinging to her like a barnacle, his protruding ribs pushing uncomfortably against her chest. Annabeth's own arms are thrown over him almost protectively, and she had hair in her mouth.

When she is entering the bathroom for a shower, Percy is still searching for his squat pink bottle of mints. Annabeth watches him from the doorway, silent and still as a shadow.

"Why are those mints so important, anyway?" she asks after a few more minutes of this. The bathroom has a caustic, iron-y tang that seeps through the Febreeze air freshener; Percy had got up some time in the night.

"Would you negotiate with a man whose mouth stinks of stomach acids and nicotine?" he snaps back at her, lifting the corner of the mattress.

"Well, then," Annabeth shrugs, "don't make it necessary to pop mints first thing in the morning."

"Easy for you to say," he glowers, looking underneath the bed. "You never missed a job because Ralph Laurent thinks you're not thin enough, or Gucci thinks you're not full enough, or Chanel wants you to change your hair..."

Shaking her head, Annabeth locks the bathroom door behind her.

:.

When she re-enters the room, toweling her hair and steaming a soapy scent into the air, she almost misses him.

He is lying motionless on the floor next to the couch, his eyes awake, tear tracks glistening down his temples. His face is paler than she had ever seen it before, the color of mountain snow, and his features are drawn out into a heart-breaking amalgamation of sadness and pain.

Near his feet are a dozen small white tablets, and a short pink bottle lies split open against the wall.

"Percy!" She's crouching at his side in two long bounds, ready to pick him up.

"Annabeth, no," he whispers. "No…don't…pick me…up."

His voice is a swan song, a funeral pyre, a flute playing Amazing Grace.

Her heart has turned solid. She isn't even sure if she's alive just then, or just a wraith. Fresh tears are bubbling into the corners of his eyes, detaching themselves before scurrying down to melt into the floor.

"Percy..." Saying his name makes her feel a little less useless, she realizes as she wipes away the fresh tears with a touch as soft as one she'd use to handle a baby. "What happened?"

"I...I slipped." There is so much hurt in his voice. It's the chord of a puppy choking, a planet dying, a newborn suffocating. "The mints...they were right there... didn't notice...stepped on them..."

He looks up at her, his eyes watery, the whites bloodshot, his lower lip trembling. There is fear in them now, streaking across his features like a careless paintbrush, spilling its black and gray and dark blue essence all over him.

"Annabeth, call an ambulance."

Her own vision has blurred a little, but she mustn't cry. "Percy, what's wrong?"

"My back." His voice is trembling. "Annabeth, I can't...I can't feel my legs."

* * *

_whoops_

_all the best._


	12. spiral

_(uploaded — 11.12.15) :: [hhahahahha fml take me out of ap lang &amp; comp its the worst _8D_ sorry bout the long wait on that cliffhanger. __if it makes it any better, i loved reading ur reviews for the last chapter, they made me cackle.__]_

:.

_I don't own_ Percy Jackson and the Olympians. _You can also find this on AO3._

* * *

**Icarus**

.

.

_you put up your defenses when you leave  
__you leave because you're certain because of who you want to be  
__you're putting up your armor when you leave  
__and you leave because you're certain of who you want to be_

* * *

**chapter twelve** :: spiral

-—

The hospital is pale blue and white and lit up in butter yellow, and smells lime green and grey. The sounds of people moving are stark red in the background.

The coffee in her hand is black, but is really a deep red-brown, no vapors around its rim. It tastes like tepid mineral water.

Annabeth holds out her hand and upturns the cup — slowly at first, then all at once. The coffee spills out gently, almost as if it doesn't have as much liquid as it did, hitting the tiled floor with the quietest splatter. She watches it splash droplets against her trousers, spreading fingers all over the floor, then melting into one shapeless blob. It looks alive, as alive as she is, as alive as Percy probably isn't, reaching for the furthest corners before drawing back, because its safest place is close to where it had started.

"Ms. Chase?"

The woman's accent is thick British, like she had been trained to speak that way, and her own mother tongue was lost in that mess somewhere but sometimes peeked through, in the roundness of her _O_'s and the drawing out of her _E_'s.

"Ms. _Chase."_

"What?" She is running on tepid water and coffee powder and worry and fatigue.

"We're moving her into surgery," the doctor tells her, her voice gentle.

Annabeth nods. Her insides seem to have frozen somewhere between discovering Percy on the floor and Dr. Singh wheeling him into Radiology. There is a scream lodged behind her teeth, and her fingers are shaking ever so slightly. Her eyes are dry, from tears and her refusal to shut them, because every time she does the latter she'd see ebony locks coated in glistening blood.

"Doc?" she croaks; her voice had nearly died. "Will he...will he be okay?"

Dr. Singh sighs, looking at her shoes. "He'll walk," she says carefully.

"But?" There was _always _a 'but'.

Dr. Singh folds her arms against her chest, tapping her side with Percy's file. Annabeth can almost _see_ the words trying to burst out from between the doctor's forearms, small red darts that would, in turn, embed themselves in the blonde's flesh and poison her very soul.

Mentally, she gives herself a shake. _Get your shit together, Chase._

"He's prepped for surgery," the doctor whispers. "We'll fix his spine. But I'm afraid I can't tell you much more, Ms. Chase. You're — you're not family or even an emergency contact. There are...confidentiality issues involved." She looks at her with distressed eyes so deep a brown they are almost black.

Annabeth scowls fiercely. "But —"

"Ms. Chase, I understand your anger." Dr. Singh tucks a loose strand of dark hair behind her ear, one of the many escaping her simple braid. "But — even if he's your partner, this is Perseus goddamn Jackson under _my_ care right now, and I kinda have to tread carefully?"

For a fleeting second, the doctor looks like a fifth-grader who had been assigned leadership of a group project.

Annabeth blinks once, nodding. Singh is a doctor, in charge of giving people their lives back, giving _Percy_ his life back; but at the end of the day, she is still a woman not much older than Annabeth, who probably wakes up some mornings with her heart racing because she had just dreamed of failure.

For Annabeth, _failure_ means using the wrong shade of brown, using _porcelain _instead of _pearl_, sending a girl to walk a Gothic theme with cheery yellow adorning her eyes.

For Singh, _failure_ means letting a life slip out from under her, being forced to remove an arm she was supposed to heal, moving her forceps a little awry and never giving Percy his legs back.

"Doc?"

Singh's expression acknowledges Annabeth's distant voice, even if her eyes don't.

"Just...just do your best, okay?"

Singh smiles. "Ms. Chase, if only there were more people who told me that every day." She glances at her watch. "Surgery can take anything between three and ten hours. I suggest you get some rest."

Annabeth shrugs, turning back to the empty Styrofoam cup in her hand.

"No, really, Ms. Chase. Get some rest, and some food while you're at it." Some mischief creeps into her voice. "Noting that some of my house-staff are rather..._smitten_ with Mr. Jackson, I think you'll find the Ortho lounge open to you."

Something buzzes quietly, and Dr. Singh pulls out her phone. "Alright. I have to go scrub in."

Annabeth listens till the sound of the doctor's loafers have faded away, and she doesn't stir an inch.

* * *

Surgery commences at seven in the evening.

Half an hour later, it is called off.

Dr. Singh finds Annabeth sitting exactly where she had left her. The blonde's chin is resting on her palms as she watches the brown streaks on the floor, left by a hasty sweep by a janitor, shift and swirl and creep about, chocolate, clay, and bark.

"Ms. Chase, I'm really sorry, but I can't operate on him right now," Dr. Singh states, sounding for all the world like a lawyer. "There were complications with the anesthesia."

"Okay."

"You are not to tell anyone I told you there are complications with the anesthesia."

"Okay."

The tiles before her are smudged, their polish removed in the mopping. In the yellowish light, they looked a lot like skin.

The doctor shuffles her feet about, nervousness rolling off her like plumes of sulfurous steam. "We...we can't operate on him at all till his mother...signs a few papers."

That catches Annabeth's attention. "I'm sorry?" A spark of anger leaps to the back of her throat. "What do you mean you _can't operate on him_?"

Dr. Singh sighs loudly, sinking into the seat on the blonde's right, her scrubs wafting the aura of a pharmacy towards her. She takes off her cap and fans herself.

"I wish I could tell you, Chase," she says slowly. "But with a high profile case like this...did you know there's a reporter in the front lobby right now?" She snorts mirthlessly, scorn staining the air under her nostrils. "To me, he's supposed to be only a young man with a broken back, and I'm just supposed to..." She sighs again, rubbing the heel of her palm into one eye socket.

_You're just supposed to heal him. You're supposed to do whatever you can to _heal _him, goddammit, not sit here with the useless pile of garbage that is me and wait for Sally Jackson to sign a piece of fucking paper._

"Is she going to die?" The words leave her unhurried, each one taking a bit of her soul with it; five words, colored from purple to indigo to deep, deep black.

Singh chews on the inside of her cheek, the movement haunting on the outside.

"Doc, is he _going to die_?"

Singh splutters, frustrated, leaping to her feet. "Fuck this," she growls angrily. "Ms. Chase, if we operate on Percy, he'll probably die, and if we don't, he'll never walk, run, drive or have children. So tell me, Ms. Chase, _what am I supposed to do?"_

Annabeth has had experience with doctors. Back home, though, they had all been old, wrinkly or in their forties, pot-bellied men and vulture-like women, professionalism so fixated in their eyes she had often wondered if they could laugh.

Dr. Singh is probably not even thirty, and she is halfway to a breakdown.

_She's probably held a beating heart in her hands._

"Doc?" She clears her throat. "Does...does my opinion matter, at all?"

The doctor smiles, looking up at the ceiling. "Not a single bit, Ms. Chase. Not a single bit."

* * *

At eleven in the night, Annabeth's stomach is swearing at her. _Now I see why you smoke, Percy._

She sits back, her legs sprawled before her, thinking about Death, and her lively younger sister Life, but that isn't right, Death should be Life's daughter, right?

_No. Death's older. She's seen worst things, done worse things, because she has aborted babies and refused suicidees and killed mothers at birth. She probably hates Life a lot, because the pesky bitch is always interfering in otherwise perfectly normal dying souls, and Life is always clearing up Death's messes, because all souls have to go somewhere, right?_

Her mouth is woolly, her palate sour. When she moves her head, she sees stars. Her world is growing more and more blue, blue like Percy's suit in Paris and the depths of his dead, dead eyes.

"Annabeth? Are you Annabeth Chase?"

Behind her eyelids, she smells raspberries in the woman's voice.

She swings her head forward, regretting the movement immediately as the contents of aforementioned head seem to swirl about inside the confines of her skull.

Annabeth's vision clears enough that she can see two people standing to her left. The woman is a middle-aged, slender brunette with pink cheeks and warm blue eyes. The man is easily over six feet tall, stockily built, his hair also a dark brown. There's a smile etched onto his face, despite the heavy atmosphere.

"Sally?" she mutters. "...Tyson?"

The woman smiles and the man nods. He bites into his lower lip, his brows forming furrows across her forehead. "You _are_ Annabeth, aren't you? Percy said you have gold hair."

Annabeth nearly snorts. "The one and only," she says instead. Her face aches too much to offer him a smile.

Sally breathes out a resounding "_Oh!_", collapsing into the seat next to her. Tyson takes the seat next to Sally, hulking over her knees to take a better look at Annabeth.

"Your hair is pretty," he says, still smiling brightly.

"Um...thanks."

An awkward silence fills the air for all of three seconds.

"How's Percy?" The question leaves Sally in one big landslide, like a balloon releasing air too quickly, laced with worry that choked her.

"Sedated, probably," Annabeth says.

"His — his surgery?"

Annabeth blinks. "Am I the first person you're talking to here?"

Sally presses her hands to her temples and rises to her feet, while Tyson's mouth draws into a grimace his brother wouldn't have been caught dead in.

"No," Tyson sighs, the grin off his face for the first time since Annabeth had seen him. "It's been a long day, and we're both just really worried." He is twisting a piece of what looks liek worn aluminum through his fingers. "What happened about Percy's surgery?"

Annabeth breathes out, deeply, and her world goes black for a fleeting second. "They didn't do it," she reports simply. "They need you to sign some papers. I'm not family or _anything_, so I couldn't."

Tyson gasps. "Why?" he nearly wails. "What's wrong with him, Annabeth, how did he _break his back_?"

Annabeth resists the urge to drop her head in her hands. "He slipped," she whispers. "He slipped on a bottle of mints. He didn't see it, and he slipped." The word _slipped_ is beginning to lose meaning to her. _Sl-ee-pped. Sahl-ee-pped. Sli-pped._

_Fuck, Annabeth, wake the fuck up._

"People don't break their backs by slipping and falling to the floor," Tyson mutters.

"The _carpeted_ floor," Annabeth adds helpfully.

The disbelief in Tyson's face is staggering. "I'm...what?"

"I really need some coffee," Annabeth raps out calmly. "Look, talk to the goddamned doctor. Her name's Kavya Singh, M.S., and you'll find her in the Ortho lounge, because that lady is _not_ going home tonight. You and Sally aren't the only ones splitting hairs about Percy."

Tyson gapes at her like a goldfish in a mud splattered bowl.

Sally had come back by that point and caught the tail end of the conversation.

"Well, then," she smiles painfully. "Let's find the Ortho lounge."

* * *

It takes her a while to get used to the fact that Sally — sweet, caring Sally with her sad smiles and warm eyes and the glass of water she tried to force feed Annabeth when she started swaying — is Percy's own mother.

_What happened to you, Percy?_

_"Too fat for Ralph Laurent, not full enough for Victoria's Secret."_

The Ortho lounge has one couch, three chairs, a bookshelf, a coffee table, and a bulky old-fashioned television set. It is painted pale blue, and the lighting is terrible.

Dr. Singh gestures them to the leather couch. Annabeth's aching bottom feels like it's sitting on clouds.

"Mrs. Jackson, before I begin..." Dr. Singh peers over Percy's file, her eyebrows motioning toward Annabeth.

"They can stay, Doctor," Sally testifies.

"Okay, then." Percy's file snaps shut like a bear-trap. "Let me start with the fracture. Your son tripped over a bottle, and this is according to Ms. Chase, and fell to the floor. The shock caused some mild trauma, and a large blunt piece of his fractured vertebra is pushing against his spinal cord. That's why his legs are paralyzed." The doctor's voice is composed, and her hands don't shake.

"That doesn't explain shit," Annabeth mutters, one hand attached to her face, fingers pressing down against flesh and bone.

Singh quirks one eyebrow. "Ms. Chase, I can still have you leave the room."

"He fell on a _carpet_," Tyson points out, backing Annabeth, the doubt in his voice as harsh as the CFL light overhead.

Singh purses her lips. "I was coming to why we can't operate." She keeps Percy's file gingerly on the coffee table, as if it is made of parchment.

Annabeth sits up a little.

"Mrs. Jackson, your son — Mr. Jackson, your half-brother — has..."

The doctor's face keeps swimming in and out of dark clouds lurking just at the edges around her round face. Annabeth's whole world seems to be the list the Singh is rattling off in her gentle voice.

_Osteoporosis._

That is the first. _Low bone density. Brittle bones. Susceptible to fracture. Are they more brittle than her emotional range?_

_Anemia._

_Anorexia._

_Bulimia._

_Ulcer._

_Cirrhosis._

_Early emphysema._

"Wha — what?" Tyson's mumble is the spot of pink on a square of black satin. Tears glimmer in Sally's eyes, and she looks like she is trying very hard to keep them back.

"His smoking has damaged his lungs." The doctor swallows. "There's a possibility they'll collapse if we need to go in via his rib cage."

"Will — will you — ?" Sally manages to get out.

"Need to go in via his rib cage? Highly unlikely."

"Oh." Sally's hands twitch in her lap. _Is she wondering if she should've taken notes?_ "Are there any more...complications?"

"Mrs. Jackson, your son is, to put it simply, _malnourished_."

Sally looks one part surprised and one part terrified. "I'm...I'm sorry?" One hand sweeps across her face, her tears dissolving what little make-up she had slapped on; streaks of cerise and beige arced across her paper-white features. "He's _malnourished_?"

"Well, yes," Dr. Singh shrugs. "He's severely underweight, he's deficient in vitamins A, D and C, and iodine and magnesium and iron, he has barely any fat, brown or white, and his muscles are atrophying to provide his protein needs. I'm honestly surprised all his hair hasn't fallen out yet." Her lips purse into something akin to annoyance. "There are more, but we're trying to stabilize them as we speak. We have him on IV—"

Tyson sobs. Loudly.

Annabeth wants to scream and laugh at the same time.

_And there I was, hoping you really were a doll, so you don't need food or water or minerals or vitamins, because your insides were as plastic as you are, and your heart frozen too solid to pump blood, and you weren't supposed to have BONES, goddammit._

"Will Brother be okay?" Tyson's face is drawn, his features scrunched, his lips wet and malformed. "Doctor, please. Tell me he's going to be okay."

Dr. Singh's smile is so sad it hurts Annabeth's soul. "Mr. Jackson, every one of his conditions are treatable. With the right diet and some medicine, his body is bound to fix itself." Her chewed fingertips drum the table-top. "The problem is, they're making his current problem untreatable."

"What are odds?" Sally asks, her voice measured. Only the slightest tremble in her voice and the skin stretching across bone-white knuckles betrays her pain.

Singh hestitates. "I'd say about a sixty percent chance he may not survive."

"...Do it," Sally whispers. "Give me the papers. I can't...I can't let him live..."

_You can't let him live legless knowing you'd taken away his chance to walk again, however bleak the chance may have been._

The doctor nods, pulling a few documents out of the file. "Please sign these. We'll start the surgery at five tomorrow morning."

* * *

_fun fact: this is probably the first chapter i wrote actually listening to icarus by bastille, after which this story is named._

_2 more chapters!_

_all the best._


	13. split

_(uploaded — 11.14.15) :: [and so we come to the penultimate chapter. as always, i hope u enjoy.__]_

:.

_I don't own_ Percy Jackson and the Olympians. _You can also find this on AO3._

* * *

**Icarus**

.

.

_and time goes quicker_  
_between the two of us_  
_oh, my love, don't forsake me_  
_take what the water gave me_

* * *

**chapter thirteen** :: split

-—

Percy is lying on the floor, his wide green eyes leaking tears into the stuck-up halo his hair formed around his head.

His face is _skeletal: _his eyes deep in their sockets, his skin flimsy, his lips thin and drawn back, revealing his teeth in an obscene grin.

_"Annabeth." _His voice is a death-rattle, air being forced out of shreds of his throat. "_Annabeth..."_

"_Percy!" _Her own voice echoes around the room. _"What happened?"_

His tears are red and brown and make her stomach recoil. "_I'm dying," _he whispers. "_Annabeth, I can't...I can't feel my legs."_

Annabeth looks at his legs, only there is nothing waist-down, just shreds of muscle and a tangle of blood vessels and blood, _so much blood_, crawling around him, creeping up his t-shirt, melting into his hair. He opens his mouth in a sob, and a river of blood and pus and vomit falls out, and the carpet soaks all of it in.

"_Annabeth." _Even as she watches, his hair slides off his head, and his scalp is covered in dark blue and black bruises — no, _sores, _weeping necrotic sores, spewing a vile black liquid.

"Rubbish." Annabeth looks up to where the voice seemed to be coming from. The ceiling is gone, and there are only flat round lights with waxy yellow coronas.

"Who's that?" she calls, and her voice is barely above a squeak. _Is that you, God?_

"Rubbish," the voice reiterates. It is Singh, the jolt in Annabeth's stomach tells her. "Percy doesn't have _bubonic plague_, Ms. Chase, what isupwithyour—"

And it is gone.

Annabeth looks down again to Percy, only now there is a skeleton on a pool of starlight, with two large green eyes looking right into the small black box at the bottom of her heart.

_Shove over, Annabeth._

A million small hands converge on Percy's remains and two slip over her eyes. Her world goes from pale buttercup to the darkest night to a garishly bright blood orange.

She peers up at a dusty looking CFL bulb.

"Let her sleep, Tyson." Sally's mumbling swims in and out of Annabeth's audio focus.

"I'm awake," Annabeth announces, the syllables tripping over each other in their hurry to escape her mouth.

"That's good." Tyson grabs his ankles and moves them to the floor, ignoring Annabeth's surprised yelp. "It's four in the morning, just by the way."

Annabeth rubs her eyes vigorously. "Are they prepping him for surgery?"

"I guess," Tyson says meekly. He stands up and walks to one of the chairs.

"Tyson, please...sit in one place." Sally's voice is a note above a whisper, her eyes puffy and her nose red. "Are you okay, Annabeth? The doctor said you're a little dehydrated."

"Probably am." Her mouth has a sour smell. "Could you...please, pass me a glass of water."

Sally gives her the Styrofoam cup and sits down next to her. She watches her with wide blue eyes as the blonde gulps down bitter strands of mineral water, her hands fidgeting without pause, before putting aside her purse with trembling hands. "I need to go to the restroom, dear, I'll just be a few."

And she hurries out, leaving Annabeth in an empty waiting room with no one but Tyson and a hundred cubic feet of stagnant, silent air.

Speaking of which —

"Percy really likes you," Tyson blurts out quickly from the other side of the room.

Some water bypasses into Annabeth's nose. She snorts once, twice, then feels her sinuses clear. Something bitter creeps down and onto her tongue.

"Um, I'm a little aware of that," she mutters. _I'm aware of what your brother's mouth tastes like, Tyson_.

Tyson wrings his hands. "I mean, he's honestly halfway in love with you." His words tumble out of him like a group of screaming toddlers, tripping and falling and getting up and brushing themselves off. "He texted me, or called me, and he'd always be, like, '_the make-up girl was here', _then it was '_Annabeth let me sleep in her room' _then '_Annabeth has the most beautiful blonde hair oh em jee', _then there was a week when—" Tyson stops himself, and cringes. "Oh. I should shut up now."

"Yeah, you should." Annabeth's ears are burning. _Annabeth has the most beautiful blonde hair, OMG._

"Can this...stay between us?" Tyson requests, looking like a thirteen-year-old. "I don't think I was supposed to tell."

Annabeth nods. "No one gets to know anything."

_Annabeth has the most beautiful blonde hair, OMG._

Annabeth laughs at the absurdity of it all. For a cheating second, she is back home.

"Tell me about Blackjack," she says suddenly.

"Our dog?" Tyson blinks at her, eyes wide and incredulous. "Percy told you about our dog?"

_Percy had a fucking meltdown about his dog. _Annabeth nods.

Tyson smiles. "Blackjack was just this huge black mongrel Percy found as a puppy in his last year in school. He was a good dog, an excellent guard dog, as a matter of fact, and he had a weird fascination with sparkly stuff and sugar cubes. That's it, really." Tyson sighs, sinking back into his hole of misery. "He didn't get along with our cat, Triton, at _all_, and now he's gone Triton's all depressed."

_How does one tell if a _cat_ is dep —_

The lounge door opens. A small nurse with curly brown hair looks around the doorway. "Doctor Singh asked me to tell you Percy Jackson has been moved into surgery," she squeaks.

The atmosphere in the lounge turns dark green from wheat yellow rapidly.

Tyson deflates visibly, his shoulders shaking. Annabeth's fingers started shaking again.

Sally comes back from the restroom.

:.

Dr. Singh enters the lounge still in her scrubs at nine in the morning, smelling of antibiotics, plastic, disinfectant, and blood.

"It was easier than I thought," she sighs. There is dried blood on her wrists. "He'll walk."

Annabeth's world turns cerulean.

Sally sobs and laughs into Tyson's barrel chest. He is doing very much the same.

"Hey, doc," Annabeth calls before the green of Singh's scrubs disappear from view. "What's the _but_?"

Singh's sigh shakes her entire frame. "We'll see about that after, Ms. Chase."

:.

Percy is white in his hospital robes, tubes surrounding him like he was the king of his court of plastic tubes.

Annabeth gives herself a mental shake.

There are tubes in both nostrils, both elbows, one out from his knuckles, one out from the crook of his arm, all carrying some liquid in or out of him. _All sure to leave a scar of some form_.

"How is he?" Sally whispers, afraid to wake her son up.

Singh shrugged. "High as a kite, probably," she all but yells. "He's sedated _and _on morphine."

She checks her watch, eyes subtly following the second hand. "He'll be waking up over the next half hour. You can stay here; I'm going to go eat."

Sally gives a strained, teary smile while Tyson drags a chair to Percy's bedside, sits down, and sprawls over the latter's midriff. Then he sobs afresh, heaves and hiccups and wrecking cries and little groans, all bubbling through a shield of saltwater.

Annabeth leans against the door, watching only Percy's chest moving up and down under one of Tyson's gentle hands, and her background score is the _pip-pip-pip _of Percy's cardiac monitor.

And she feels her world shift into baby blues and sapphires and pastel champagne, cerise and cherry blossom and lilac, buttercups and sunshine and the pale green of mint.

:.

Forty five minutes. It takes Percy forty five minutes to wake up.

His eyes blink six and a half times. He sucks in a lot of air and breathes it out. His irises sweep in a downward arc towards his mother and brother.

"Ah — Mom? Tyson?"

Tyson stops breathing while Sally inhales noisily. Annabeth can practically hear their hearts stitching themselves back into place.

The younger throws himself around the elder, always gentle, always loving, resting his cheek against the shaggy black of Percy's hair. Percy raises two drowsy arms to wrap around his little brother's midriff, smiling like a child, his mouth wide and welcoming and dripping relief.

He peers from under Tyson's arm, catching Annabeth's eye. His smile widens, and he looks half drunk and half in heaven.

"Well, if it isn't blondie," he mumbles, his words slurring but dripping snark nonetheless.

Annabeth laughs, allowing one tear to run down her cheeks, then another. She walks to him, with the plastic in his nose and morphine in his bloodstream, and holds his sallow cheeks as she presses her lips to his forehead.

She holds his face as she presses her forehead to his, one damp and the other cold, and as he kisses her nose and calls her _Blondie_ again, she feels her heart cracking, then snapping, and then the ice is tears.

:.

"He'll be gaining weight." Dr. Gardner is a young nutritionist with a no-nonsense snap to her voice. "He's going to be on carbs and a lot of proteins, alongside all the fresh edible vegetation he can get his hands on."

"He'll also have to exercise," Dr. Singh adds. "But only to keep the excess burned. And not before his physiotherapy's over."

Sally nods, her pencil scratching its way down a newly purchased spiral notebook. "When does the brace come off?"

"No less than six weeks," Singh supplies. "I'll be referring him to one of my colleagues in New York; she'll decide the exact time span according to any developments that may come up."

"Right." Sally nods.

"I'd prefer if he took a break from work, even after he's recovered," Dr. Gardner nods. "I'm not from Psych, but I think a little less stress on being perfect will help with the eating disorders."

_Well, Percy, looks like it took you a broken back to stop being a human coat-hanger._

"That'll be a tragedy to no one but every single teenage girl across the planet, I'm sure," Singh mutters darkly.

Sally chews on the inside of her cheek. "That's up to Percy, though, isn't it?"

"Of course it is." Dr. Gardner smiles. "He's only twenty four, he has her life ahead of her, if he doesn't smoke, starve, or drink it away."

Sally looks up at the silent Annabeth, her blue eyes quivering. "Maybe, yes."

Annabeth shrugs. _I don't really like that look, lady._

:.

"We're taking a jet to JFK, then taking a car to Montauk."

Tyson's announcement echoes in the empty corridor.

Annabeth nods, smirking. "His manager's got a thing for going all the way."

"Will you come with us?"

Annabeth opens her mouth to answer, but it catches in her throat.

She pats his shoulder. "I would love to, but I still have a job to do."

Tyson's face falls. In her sleepy mind, it is melting off. "Oh. It's okay."

"Thank you."

The silence is heavy on her lungs.

"He never wants to model ever again," Tyson whispers. "He says he wants to go to college."

Annabeth smiles. "That's a good decision."

"You think so?"

Annabeth shrugs. "Modeling nearly killed him. Shit like English doesn't usually tend to do that."

"He might take up art or something."

"That's excellent."

Silence again; the silence of ruined expectations.

"They're prepping him for a journey." Tyson smiles gently. "Come on, he'll want to see you."

Percy is in a wheelchair, Sally at his side, his back held ramrod straight by an ugly steel contraption that wraps around his head. He looks hopefully at Annabeth, then Tyson.

"Are you coming to see the town where this cyborg grew up?" he pipes up.

Annabeth shakes her head. "I have work. Thalia's going to be furious."

Percy's mouth twists. "You're going to stay in that world?"

She kneels to kiss his cheek. "If I'm in New York City anytime, I'll come drive out east and visit."

He grabs her hand, the plastic tubing pressing into her skin. "Do you promise?" His voice is a hush. "Do you promise to come visit?"

Annabeth laughs, pressing her mouth to his fingers. "Don't worry, Percy," she smiles. "If I'm in New York City, I'll surely come visit."

:.

She never does.

* * *

_last chapter coming sometime...soonish. hopefully._ :)

_all the best._


	14. beginnings

_(uploaded — 11.14.15) :: [there were apparently some mixups last chapter that i didn't notice (long story short i cut out/edited an entire sub-arc that didnt make it) but they're all fixed. the beginning part was a bit confusing though i guess. sorry bout that, hope that clears things up. _:) _and...my god i got an even angrier reaction to the ending last chapter than i did with 'fall', which is saying something.__]_

:.

_I don't own_ Percy Jackson and the Olympians. _You can also find this on AO3._

* * *

**Icarus**

.

.

_every time i close my eyes, i hear your favorite song_  
_telling me not to run, not to worry anymore_  
_i can hold on tight to nothing better than the rest_  
_so it's now or never more_

* * *

**chapter fourteen** :: beginnings

-—

The July after what she now refers to as the Stockholm Fiasco finds her back home in Virginia.

Come autumn, her identity card will read _Annabeth Chase, Staff. _She is going to teach art in her small town, and she'd be painting walls in her free time.

Home had caught her unawares when the sign outside her father's shop read _Chase's Frostings and Art Supplies, _instead of the simple, fuss-free _Chase's Art Supplies and Models_.

Her father, apparently, had found herself with far too much free time after Annabeth and her twin brothers had left, for work and college respective. He'd replaced his parenting with baking and tinkering with those little model airplanes he always liked, and now the shop sells cupcakes alongside rows of watercolor tubes and Airbus A380s.

Presently, Annabeth is half-hanging off the drawing room couch, caught in the line of the air conditioning vent. The background is the buzz of the ceiling fan and the chattering of an over-zealous talk show host on the television screen. Outside, children trample lawns and hop over sidewalks and bushes and through trees, because all children seem to possess some secret store of mystical self-cooling property.

"Annabeth?" Her father pokes his head in and drops the phone on her lap. It stings. "Call for you."

Annabeth scrambles for the wireless phone before it slips into the seam. "Hello?"

"Is this Annabeth Chase, the complete asshole who left me for a position in a _high school_?"

Annabeth grins to herself, turning herself onto her back. "Hey there, Thals. Where are you?"

"I believe the question starts with a _how_." Even over the static, she can see Thalia grinning, spiky bangs brushing over her blue eyes. "I'm in Sydney, fuckhead. You would have been here, if you didn't run off to teach a bunch of hormonal teenagers the complexities of perspectives."

"Love you too, Thalia."

Thalia snorts, a rush of static rubbing against Annabeth's ear drum. "I didn't call you complain, though. Jackson mailed me, because _someone_ couldn't be bothered to share her e-mail ID."

"Which one?" Annabeth yawns.

"How many do you know?"

"Three, so far. Unless one just had a baby."

Thalia can be heard breathing in, then out. In, then out, again. "The dark-haired one."

"Black, dark brown, or light brown?"

"_Goddammit, Annabeth_. Percy. Percy mailed me." Thalia's exasperation ceases to be amusing. "Apparently, you couldn't be bothered to visit your own boyfriend. He says he'll be in Virginia by late August. So watch your ass, you bugger."

"He's not my boyfriend," Annabeth sighs. "And I don't really care anymore."

"You're an idiot, Annabeth Chase." And Thalia is gone.

* * *

"Dad, I'm going to need some pencils..."

Her father is at the counter, and he is talking to a tall, slender man with his dark hair in disarray and body garbed in pale blue and black, holding a half-eaten lemonade cupcake.

Both men turn to her when she enters, and Annabeth looks only at the younger one. Percy's eyes are wide, still sea green, and sparkling with the remnants of some jape Annabeth's father had just shared.

His cheekbones are still prominent, but his cheeks have no hollows and are flushed. His arms flatten where they rest against the black overlay of his jacket, because they are flesh now, and he is flesh and blood and standing before her, and there is frosting on the tip of his nose.

From somewhere near her heart, she hears the sharp _crack_ of blood freezing over.

The bell over the door and her father's breathing are her background score now, and the _pip-pip-pip_ echoes in her memory.

"But," she blurts out, "you _hate_ icing."

Percy frowns for a second or two, but it melts into a wide smile, and his eyes have tears in them. The air is the golden brown of the fall outside.

"I do," he says. "But your father's is amazing."

Annabeth's father utters a soft _oh_ before slinking away almost craftily.

"You're in the college here?" The art college is half a mile out of town.

He nods. "I'm studying Fashion Tech. This was the only place who'd, you know..." He looks at his shoes, a pair in comfortable loafers. His ankles are still skinny.

"Well, you're a celebrity," she smirks. "And this is a small town."

He snorts. "Shut up."

Annabeth drops her bundle of submitted homework assignments on the counter. "Y'know, when Thalia told me you're in the States, I expected you in, I dunno, New York or something." She smiles wider, so wide her mouth hurts. "If you weren't so surprised to see me, I'd say you _followed_ me here."

He looks like he is going to hurl his cupcake at her mid-laugh. He's beautiful, and he's just a handsome man who had walked into a cupcake shop and a former god who had fallen to humanity.

"You're an idiot, Annabeth Chase," he grins, and the hand moving hair out of his face had scarless knuckles.

Annabeth grins back.

This time, she does feel proud.

* * *

**the end**

* * *

_percy can be dumb and annoying and oblivious sometimes but he never gives up and if annabeth ain't going to him he's sure as hell gonna go to her._

_all the best._


End file.
